The Story of Madras - Forgotten Books

THE”

STORY OFMADRAS

GLYN BARLOW,M .A .

W ITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRAT IONSBY THE AUTHOR

HUMPHREY M ILFORD

OXFORD UN IVERS ITY PRESS

LONDON , BOMBAY , CALCUTTA , MADRA S

1 92 1

PREFACE

Th i s l i t t le book i s not a H i s to ry of Madras ,

a l though i t con t a i n s a good deal of Madras h i s to ry and

i t i s no t a Gu ide to Madras ,”al though i t g ives

accoun t s of some of the pr i n c ipal bu i ld i ngs in the c i ty .

The book wi l l have fu lfil led i t s pu rpose i f i t help s

the reader to real ize that the C i ty of Madras i s a

part icu l arly i n tere s t ing corne r o f the w o rld . Th i s fac t

i s o ften fo rgot t e n ; and even many o f the peop le w ho

l i ve i n Madras i t sel f , and w ho are aw are that Madras

has p layed an impo rt an t par t i n the mak i ng of I nd i a’

s

h i s t o ry , are s t rangely u n i n te re sted i n i ts h i s t o r ic

remai n s . They are e loquen t pe rhap s in denou nc ing

the heat o f Madras and i t s mo squ i toes and the i n i

qu i t ies o f i t s Cooum r iver ; but they have neve r a

w o rd '

to say on i t s en chan t ing m em o r ia l s of the pas t .

Madras has memo r ial s i ndeed . Madras i s an h i s to r ica l

m u seum , w here the s igh t seer may spe nd m any and

m any an bou rj— i h s t reet and i n bu i ld ing

— s tudy ingo ld-w o rld exh i b i t s

,and l i v i ng for the w h i le i n the

fasc i n at ing pas t . Madras i s not an anc ien t c i ty ; i t s

foundat ion i s not asc r i bed to some myth ic k i ng w ho

r uled in myth ic t imes ; i t has no hoary ru i n s , too old

to be h i stor ic and t oo legendary t o be insp i r ing . Bu t

Madras i s o ld enough fo r i t s reco rds to be roman t ic ,and at the sam e t ime i s you ng enough fo r i t s earl ies t

accou n t s of i t sel f to be— not un sat i sfy ing fables,bu t

i n te res t i ng fac t . The s to ry of Madra s fil ls an abso rb

i ng page o f h i s to ry, and the s ight s of Mad ras are w e l l

4 8 4 7 9 6

v i PREFA CE

w o r thy of sympathe t ic i n t e res t— e spec ia l ly on the part

o f tho se who se l i n e s o f l i fe are cas t in the h i s to r ic

c i ty i t se l f o r w i th i n the h i s t o r ic p res idency of w h ich

i t i s the cap i t a l .

I n the fo l low i ng page s ce rta i n p l aces and even t s

have been br iefly desc r i bed more than once w i th d i ffe r

en t deta i l s ; any such repe t i t ion s are due t o the fact

tha t the Sto ry o f Madras has been to ld in a ser ies

of v igne ttes , apper ta i n i ng t o par t icu la r bu i ld i ng s o r

par t icu la r condi t i o n s , and each vigne t te had to be

com p l e te i n i t self . I t i s hoped tha t such repet i t ions

i l l be o f fam i l i a r i n t e re s t , ra the r than t ed i ou s .

I n respec t of the fac t s that are reco rded , apart from

g en e ra l h i s to ry ,I am i ndebt ed p r i n c ipal ly to the valu

abl e Records of Fo rt S t . Geo rge , w hich the Madras

Governmen t have been publ i sh ing , vo lum e by volum e,

d u ring severa l years , and w h ich I have s tud ied w i th

in teres t s ince the fi r s t vo lume appeared . Of o the r

w orks that I have con su l ted , I m u s t spec i a l ly m ent ion

C o lone l Love ’s Ve s t ige s o f Madras ,” wh ich i s a very

m i ne of i n fo rmat ion .

‘

G .B .

MADRA S , 1 92 1 .

CONTENTS

PRE F ACEC HAP

I . BEF ORE TH E BEG I NN INGI I . THE BEG I NN I NGI I I . FORT ST . GEORGEIV . DEVELOPMENTV .

‘

THE WALL '

V I . EXPAN S I O NV I I . OUTPO STSV I I I . THE C HU R CH I N TH E FORTIX . ROMAN CATHOL I C M ADRA s

X . C HEPAU K PALACEX I . GOVER NM ENT HOU SEX I I . M ADRAs A ND THE SE AX I I I . TH E STORY OF THE SCHOOLSX IV . H E RE AND

,TH E R E

XV . NO MEAN C ITY

ILLUSTRAT IONS

C I I EPAUK PALACE

M AP OF MADR AS , ABOUT 1 71 0C OR R ESPO ND I NG M AP. 1 9 2 1

C L IVE’

s HOU SEA B IT OF TH E BLACK TOW N WALLC ENTRAL GATE OF TH E BLACK TOW N WALLA MAGA Z INE I N THE BLACK TOW N WALLT HE OLD AND THE NEWM AP OF M ADRAs

S A N T H OMEFORTEGMORE FORT (S IDE V I EW )REMA I N S OF THE EGMORE FORTST . MARY ’S , FORT ST .

. GEOR GEGOVERN M E NT HOU SE

,MADR A S

TH E SEA GATETHE COMPANY ' S FLAGSU R F -BOATU N IVER S I TY SEN ATE H OU SEPA CHA IYA PPA

’

S COLLEGEDOVETO N PROTESTA NT C OLLEGEST . GEORGE ' S C ATHEDR ALST . ANDREW ’ S (THE K I R KST . THOM E CATH EDRAL

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES

The East Ind ia Company estab l ishedF ir st Eng l ish settlement , at Masul ipatamS ite of Madras acqu ired by Mr . Franc is Day

The acqu is it ion confirmed at C handrag iri by the H induLord of the Carnatic

The H indu lord o f the Carnatic ( the Raja of Chandrag iri )dethroned by the Mohammedan Su l tan of Go lconda

The Company secu r e from Go lconda a fresh title to the irpOSSeS S lODS

The Su l tan o f Go lconda dethr oned by the Moghu lEmpero r A urangzeb ,

w ho appo ints a‘Naw ab of the

C arnaticT he Company secure fr om a representative o f the Emperor

a fresh title to th eir possess ionsD a-ud Khan ,

Naw ab of the Carnatic . inves ts Madras forth r ee month s , and i s final ly bought off

I n Eu rope , Eng land and France ar e engaged in the War

o f the A us tr ian Succes s ion 1 740— 1 748

D up le ix,w ho i s possessed w ith the idea of mak ing France

po l i tical ly influentia l in Ind ia , i s appo inted Governor ofPond icherry

I n the w ar in Eu r ope he sees an oppor tun ity for fightingthe Eng l ish in India ,

and French forces under LaBourdonnai s capture Mad ras

Treaty o f Ai x- la-Chapel le ,by w h ich Madr as is restored to

th e Eng l ishTWO Car nat i c princes quarr e l for the Naw absh ipThe Fr ench and the Eng l i sh in Sou th Ind ia jo in in the

quar r e l on Oppos ite S ldeS . In the nam e of the C laimantW hom the Eng l ish sup ported , C l ive cap t ur es Arco t ,the cap ita l of the Carnatic , and then defends the tow nagainst the r iva l claimant and h i s French suppor ters

The Fr ench ar e defeated in the Open fie ld, and the

str ugg le i s a t an end

I n Eu rope ,Eng land and France ar e engaged in the Seven

Years ’ War 1 756 ‘ 1 763

x CHRONOLOGI CA L NOTE S

I n Ind ia , Count Lal ly besieges Madras unsuccessfu l ly formore than tw o months A . I) . 1 75 8- 1 759

The Eng l ish defeat the Fr ench at VVand iwaSh 1 760

T he Eng l ish capture Pond icher r y 1 761

T r eaty of Par is b y w hich Pondicherry i s restored to theFrench

(The tow n w as captured again in 1 786 and in

Haidar A l i makes h imsel f Su l tan of Mysore about 1 760 ,

and reigns ti l l h i s death ,w hich occurred in

T ipu , h i s son , succeeds h im , and re igns ti l l he i s s lain indefend ing h is cap ital , Seringapatam . against an assau l tby the Eng l ish(Madras w as frequently d isturbed by the r aids of the

father and o f the son ; and T ipu'

s death rel ievedthe tow nsmen of constant anxiety . )

The Supreme Court of Judicature establ ished at Madras .

I n defau lt of an heir , the Carnatic lapses to the Com

pany . N

The Madras Rai lw ay opened for traffi cThe Ind ian Mu tinyThe Madras Un iversity inst i tutedThe H igh Court estab l ished

CHAPTER I

BEFORE THE BEGINN ING

Three hundred years ago , Madras , under the name‘

of“A M

ERRATUM

On page 1 , f or Madraspatnam read Madraspatam .

’

p er i lous pursu i t of th e spo i l s of the sea . There was one

smal l town in the neighbourhood , namely , the Portuguese

s ett lement at My lapore , where the tal l facades of the

s everal churches , peeping over the trees , formed a land

m ark for the Portuguese sh ips that occas iona lly cast

anchor in the roads .

Such was the scene in 1 639 , the y ear in which our story

of Madras beg ins . The Portuguese had already been in

I ndia for nearly a century and a hal f ; and under the i r

early and able v iceroys they had made themselves power

f ul . The stately c ity of Goa was the capital of the ir

I nd ian domin ions , and they had set tlements at Cochin ,Cal icu t , My lapor

‘

e, and elsewhere . But the influence of

the Portuguese was now on the wane . F or nearly a cell .

t ury they had been the on ly European power in India and

x CHRONOLOGICA L N OTE S

In Ind ia. Count Lal ly bes ieges Madras unsuccessfu l ly formore than tw o months A D

The Eng l ish defeat the Fr ench at VVand iwashThe Eng l ish cap ture Pond icherr yTreaty of Paris , b y

,

w hich Pond icherry i s restored to theFrench

(The tow n w as captured again in 1 786 and in

Haidar A l i makes himse l f Su ltan of Mysore about 1 760 ,

and reigns t i l l h is death ,w h ich occurred in

T ipu , h i s son , succeeds h im , a nd reigns ti l l he i s s lain in. 1 Is i c m m i a l Qp r i n g a na tam . ag ainst an assau l t

CHAPTER I

BEFORE THE BEG INN ING

Three hundred years ago , Madras , under the name of

Madraspa tnam w as a t iny rural vi llag e on the Coromandel

Coast . Scattered about in the ne ighbourho od there

were other rural vi l lages , such as Egmore , Vepe ry , and

Tr i pl icane , which ar e crowded distr icts in the great C i ty

o f Madras tod ay . I n Trip l i cane there was an ancient

t emp le , a centre of p ilgr image , dating , l ik e manyvi l lage temples in I nd ia , from very d i stan t t imes ; th is wasthe Par thasarathy temple , wh ich i s the Tr i pl icane

Temp le" st i l l . A l i t t l e fishing vi l lag e cal led Kuppam ,

ly ing d irectly on the seashore , sen t out , even as Kuppam

does now , i ts bold fishermen in the ir ricket y catamarans in

peri lous pursui t of th e spo i ls of the sea . There was one

smal l town in the neighbourhood , namely , the Portuguese

s ett lement at My lapore , Where the tall facades of the

several churches , peeping over the trees , formed a land

mark for the Portuguese sh ips that occas ionally cast

anchor in the roads .

Such was the scene in 1 639 , the year in which our story

of Madras begins . The Portuguese had already been in

I ndia for nearly a century and a half ; and under thei r

early and able v iceroys they had made themselves power

fu l . The stately c ity of Goa was the capital of the i r

I ndian domin ions , and they had settlements at Cochin ,Cal icu t , My lapore, and elsewhere . But the influence of

the Portuguese -was now on the wane . FOr nearly a cent ury they had been the on ly Eur opean power in India and

the Eastern seas ; but merchants in other European coun

tr ies had marked wi th j ealous eyes the r ich profits that thePortuguese der ived from thei r Eastern traffic

,and com .

pet i tors appeared in the field . F i rst came the Dutch,who

in I ndia establi shed themselves at Pulicat,some twenty

five miles nor th of Mylapore . Holland had lately thrown

off the yoke of Spain , and was ful l of new -born vigour ;and Dutch trade in the East— ch iefly in the East I nd ia

I s lands— was pushed w i th a rancorous energy that roused

the vain indignat i on of the decadent Portuguese . S ix

years later , in 1600 , came the Eng l ish . The En g l i sh

trade rs w ere employees of the newly -establ i shed East

I ndia Company , and were sen t out to do bus iness fo r theCompany in the East and they had to face the Oppos i t ion

of the Dutch.

as well as of the Portuguese . Their earl i est

enterpr ise was in the East I nd ia I s lands,and i t was eleven

years before they gain ed thei r first footing in I ndia , at

Masul i patam . Here they establ ished an agency and d id

very cons iderable bus iness ; later they formed a fort ified

sub -ag ency a t A rmagaum , a g ood way down the coast ,not far from N el lore . A t first thei r fortunes went wel l ;but l ocal rulers exacted ru inous dues , and at A rmagaum

in part icular the local ruler , alarmed at the influence that

the Eng l i sh merchants had gained , set h imsel f so ser i

ous ly to the work of hand icap ping thei r trade that M r .

F ranc is Day , the Company’ s representat ive at A rmagaum

and a member of th e M asul ipatam Counc i l , proposed tothe Counci l that he should be allowed to seek a fi eld for

c ommercial en terpri se more favourable than either A rma

g aum or Masulipa tam . To Mr . F rancis Day was com

m i t ted the bus iness of find ing a sui tab le spot for a fresh

s e t t lemen t .

I t w as an importan t commiss ion . The East Ind iaCompany

’s ex istence depended ent ire ly upon the p rofits of

- the i r trade . The Company' s en terp rise at A rmagaum w as

BEFORE THE BEGINN ING 3

hopeless at Masulipatam it was very unsat isfactory and

Mr . F ranc i s Day was appoin ted to find a place where the

c ommercial prospec ts would be brigh t .

I t should always be remembered that the East I ndia

Company was establ i shed p urely as a commerc ial as socia

t ion , w i th i ts head office i n London , and that i ts employees

in India were men wi th bus iness qual ificat ions , appointed

to carry on the Company ’s t rade . The pr ime concern

even of an A gent or a Governor was the mak ing of good

bargains on the Company’

s behalf— and sometimes on h i s

own— gett ing the bes t prices for European broadc loths and

brocades , and buy ing as cheap l y as poss ib le I ndian mus

l ins and calicoes and natural p roduce , for exportat i on

to London,where they were sold at a large profit . Any

fighting in wh ich the Company ’s servan ts engaged was

merely inc iden tal to the pursuit of bus iness in a land in

which the rul ing sovereigns , as well as the man y smal l

Ch iefs , were constant ly at war . I t i s a maxim that‘Trade fol low s the F lag ;

’ but i n the case of I nd ia the

F lag has followed Trade .

I t i s as a commercial man , therefore , that we must p icture M r . F ranci s Day sett ing ou t on h is commerc ial m ission ;but i t can be imag ined that the Eng l ish merchan t , start

ing on an exped it ion in w hich he would be l ikely to seek

personal interv i ew s wi th raj as and nawabs and b id for thei r

favour , set out in such style as w ould do the Company

cred i t . I n our mind ’ s eye w e p icture Master F ranc i s

Day , Chie f of A rmagaum , standing on the deck of one of

the Company’ s vesse ls ly ing at anchor in the A rm agaum

roads , and rece iv ing h is colleagues’ farewell s . H is garb

i s that of a substan t ial merchant in the days of K ing

Charles I . I t has none of the ex travagances that were

the fash ionable affectat ions of gay Caval iers,bu t i ts

sobr iety makes i t none the less smart . He wears a purple

doublet and hose , a broad w hite col lar edged with lace ,

4 THE STORY OF MADRA S

and a gracefully-short black -velvet C loak . Curly hai r fal ls

beneath h is broad-brimmed black hat , but not in longand scented r inglets such as were tra ined to fal l be low

the shou lders of fash ionable gal lant s at King Charles’s

court . He is in every way a fitt ing representat ive of the

Honourable Company .

The bo'

s un‘

has‘piped h is whist l e , and the last good

byes have been sa id . The anchor’

s weighed , and the

white sa i ls are spread to the breeze . Master Day waves

his hand to his coll eagues in the surf-boat wh ich is takingthem shoreward

, and the sh ip is headed to the south . The

exped i t ion is importan t— yes , and i t was much more impor

tant than Maste r Day imag ined ; for someth ing more

ser ious than profit s on mus l in and brocade w as on the

anv i l of fate .

CHAPTER I I

THE BEGINN ING

Mr . F ranc is Day was not sa i l ing southward withou t

definite plans . A s the resul t of enquir ies for a promisingspot for a new sett lement , i t was h is purpose to see i f there

was a favourable s i te in the neighbourhood of the old

establ ished Portuguese sett lemen t a t Mylapore . The

Portuguese author it ies at Mylapore , w i th whom Mr . Day

seems to have corresponded , were not unw i ll ing to have

Engl ish ne ighbours . The i l l -success of the Engl ish

merchants at Masul i patam had probably al layed any fear s

that they would be formidable r ival s to Por tug uese trade

at Mylapore ; and furthermore the Portuguese welcomed

the idea of European neighbours who would be at one with

them in oppos i t ion to the forcefu l D utchmen at Pulicat ,

up the coast , who showed no respect , not even of a.

ceremon ious k ind , for any vested in terests— commerc ial oradministrative— to which the Portuguese laid claim .

So Mr . F rancis Day ’s vessel , s tanding no doubt well ou t

to sea as i t sai led past the foreshore of the Pulica t lagoon

with its unffiendly Dutchmen , kep t i ts course t il l theMylapore churches were s ighted and showed that theplace where the first inquir ies were to be made had been

reached . The sai ls were furled and the anchors were

dropped , and we may imagine that a sal ute was fi red in

honour of the King of Portugal , and w as duly acknowledged .

I t was in winter that Mr. Franc is Day arr i ved— a t ime

of the year when Madr as looks i ts best and whe n the sea ,

horses are not always at the i r w i ldest tricks ; and


Mr . F ranc is Day landed W i thout accident , and was p leased

with the scene . There are always breakers , however , on

the Coromandel Coast , and M r . Day found the landing so

exc i t ing that in h is report to the Counci l at Masul ipatam

he wrote of‘

the heavy and dangerous surf ’ . But after

an inspec t i on of the surroundings he was sat isfied with the

condit ions ; he cons idered that at the mouth of the Cooum

river there was an advantageous si te for a commerc ial

settlement ; and the local ruler , the N aik of Poonamal l ee ,fol lowing the advice of the Portug uese authorit ies , encouraged h im in the idea of an Eng l i sh set t lement with in the

Poonamal lee domain .

I t is not surpris ing that M r . F rancis Day was pleased

with what he saw ; for Madras is not without beauty . I n

those i dy ll ic day s , moreover , the Cooum r iver , wh ich was

known then as the Tr ipl icane r iver— and which even

to-day can be beaut ifu l , al though for the greater par t of

the year i t i s no more than a stagnant d i tch— mus t have

been a l impid water -way and to Mr . F ranci s Day,seeing

i t in win ter , in wh ich season the curren t swollen by the

rain somet imes succeeds in bursting the bar , i t must have

appeared almost as a nob l e r iver , rushing down to the great

sea— a r iver such as migh t well have deserved the erec t ion

o f a town on i ts banks . The fact that the Portuguese had

been at Mylapore for more than a century show ed tha t a

sett lement was full of p romise— and the mor e so for men

w i th the energy of the Engl i sh Company ’ s representat i ves

and the condi t ions were such that Mr . F ranc is Day felt

h imsel f j ust ified in en tering in to negot iat ions with the

N aik for the g ran t of an es tate e xtending five m iles along

the shore and a mile inland .

The negotiat ions were successful : but the N aik was

subordinate to the lord of the soi l , the Raj a of Chandragir i ,who was the l iv ing rep resen tat i ve of the once great and

magnificent H indu empire of V i j ianagar ; -and any grant

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settlement that he had founded , bu t he was rel i eved of , or

r es igned , the office a t the end of a year . H e then went

to the Company ’s head -quarters at Bantam , in J ava, and

a fterwards to England . What finally became of h im i s

appar en tly unknown .

I t would probably be difficu l t to say whether Mr. F ranc is

Day was a gr eat man with great i dea ls , or was merely a

shrewd man of bus iness , rel iable for an important com

merc ial mission . Remembering that the Company was

s tr ictly a commer c ial concern , we may think i t l ikely that ,in fix ing upon Madras as a si te for the Company ’ s business ,he was guided almost en t i re ly by the quest ion of trade

p rofits , and that in h i s mind' s eye there were no p rOphet ic

v is ions of imperi al g lory . A nd i t has been asked indeed

whe ther or not h e rea l ly chose well in choos ing Madras

pa tnam by the Tr ipl icane r iver as the s i te of the proposed

n ew se tt l ement ; for there are those who have argued that

the prospe ri ty of Madras has been due to dogged Bri t ish

enterprise and placid I nd ian co-operation , not to natural

advan tages , and that Madras has prospered in spi te of

Madras . We must bear i n mind , however , the l imited

g eograph ica l knowledge of the t imes and the l imitat ion s

t o Mr . F ranc i s Day ’s choice ; and , whatever the verd ic t

may be , the fact remains that the Madraspatnam of Mr .

F rancis Day’s select ion i s now a vast city , and that the

Empire of Ind ia which was born at Chandragiri i s now a

m igh ty inst i tut ion .

CHAPTER 1 1 1

FORT ST . GEORGE

When the tract of land at Madras had be en formal ly

acquired,the European colony at A rmagaum was forthwith

shipped thereto (F ebruary , A ccord ing to accounts ,the colony

,wi th M r . Andr ew Cogan at the head , ass isted

by M r . F rancis Day and perhaps another ch ief o ffi c ial ,included some three or four Bri t ish

‘

wri ters ,’ a gunner , a

surgeon , a garrison of some twenty -five Br i t ish sold iers

under a l ieutenant and a sergeant , a certain number of

Eng l i sh carpenters , b lacksmiths and coopers , and a smal l

staff of Engl i sh servants for k i tchen and general work .

Madras was a sandy beach where the Eng l ish

began by erect ing ' straw huts . So says an old-t ime

Chron icle ,‘the w ork of an early res iden t of Madras ; and , i f

we take the word s traw in a broad sense , we can eas i ly

conce ive the scene . I n Madras the bamboo and the palmyragrow in abundance

,furn ish ing materia ls for the quick

provi s ion of cheap and commodious accommodation ; and

we can picture the pi lgrim fathers of Madras camped in

palmyra -thatched mat -sheds on the nor th bank of the

Cooum r i ver , near the bar , the wh ile that the houses wi thinthe plan of the fort are be ing bui l t .

1 The Chron icle w as w ritten by Manucci , an Ital ian doctor of an

adventurous d ispos ition ,w ho , after var ied and surpris ing experiences

in northern Ind ia ,settled dow n in Madras in 1 686 ,

and mar ried a

Euras ian w idow .

‘

Manucc i’

s Garden,

’

w here he l ived, covered a

large area w hich i s now occup ied by a number of the houses at the

Law Col lege end of Popham’

s Broadway , on the s ide that is near est

the sea . The garden-

was w atered by a str eam that used to flow

w here the Broadw ay tram- l ines now hold their course . Vida map ,

p . 1 0 .

1 2 THE STORY OF MADRA S

The sandy beach has been waked from its longaeval

p lac id i ty . Trains of bul lock -carts are lumber ing along

new -made tracks , br ing ing stone and later ite and bricks

and t imber from var ious centr es ; and endless fi les of cool i es ,wi th baskets on the i r heads ,

‘

are bringing sand from the

summer-dry edges of the bed of the Cooum river . I n the

foreground of the p icture , scores of chatter ing V i llage

l abourers , from Tr ipl icane and other hamlets hard by , are

work ing under the d irect ions of the mechanical employees

o f th e Company , ch ipping stone ,m ixing l ime , sawing t imber ,carry ing br icks and stones and mortar , or laying them

adr oi tly in place , with l i ttl e dependence on l ine and

level .

I n the course of a few months the building s w ere su ffici

ently advanced for occupat ion . The main bui ld ing w as the

factory ,’ which formerly s ign ified a mercant i le offi ce ; and i t

w as here that the Company ’s ch ief offi c ials , who were

styled’

fac tors ’ (agents) , ass isted by writers and apprentices ,t ran sacted the Company ’s business , and were also lodged .

I ncluded amongst the build ings were warehouses for the

Company ’s goods , and also barrack - l ike res idences for the

Company’ s subord inate Br i t i sh employees , civ i l and mil i

t ary , accord ing to thei r rank .

F rom the very beginn ing the settlement was called Fort

St . George , but i t was several years before the bu i ldings

were surrounded by a high and fort ified wal l . I t was i n

no spiri t of mil i tar y aggress i on that the Company ’s agents

enc losed the ir sett lement with a bast ioned rampart, from

whose battl ements big cannon frowned on all s i des round .

The Company ’s representat ives were gentle merchaunt s,’

to whom peace spel t prosper ity but the t imes were lawless ,and the gentl e merchants were wise enough to recognize

that days might come when i t would be necessary to defend

thei r merchandise and themselves , as wel l as the town of

Madras , from the roving robber or the princely raider or the

FORT ST.

’

GEORGE 13

revengeful trade-r ival , and tha t mi l itary preparedness w as

a dictate of prudence . The days came"On such occas ions the exc i tement in Fort St . George

must have been g reat . We can imagine the anx i e ty with

w hich , when’

the sen try gave the alarm , the gentle merchants

c l imbed upon‘

the walls and looked out at the horsemen

that were to be descr ied in the d istance , and asked one

another d isconsolately whether i t was in peace or in w ar

that they came . A brief not ice of some of the occas i ons

on which the Fort was in danger wil l be in terest ing .

Some fi fty years after the F or t had been founded , aparty of soldiers under the Commander-in -Ch ief of theMohammedan King of Golconda pursued some of theKing’s enem i es into Madras , burn ing and Robbing of

houses , and taking the Companies C lo th and goods ,” where

upon the Governor of the Fort sent them word that he

w ould use means to force them out of the Town e Uppon

which they retreated out of shott of the F ort . They

returned , however , wi th add i t ional s tr ength , and for eight

months they bes ieg ed the stronghold , but without success ;and then they weari ed of thei r hopel ess endeavour

,and

march d away .

Later , a Dutch force , supported by Mohammedan cavalry ,bes ieged San Thome, which w as then in the hands of theF rench ; and for the purpose of the s i ege they oc cup ied

Tr ipl icane vi l lage , mounting thei r cannon with in the walls

o f Tr ipl icane Temple, which they used as a fort . During

the several weeks of the s i ege of San Thome a powerfu l

Dutch squadron b lockaded the coast of Madras ; and , as

Bri tain and Holland were at war in Europe, there was

constan t anx ie ty in Fort St . George but the Du tchmen

contented themselves with the capture of San Thomé , and

were prudent enough to let Fort S t . George alone .I n the days of Queen A nne , Da -ud Khan , Nawab of the

Carnatic , a t the head of a large force , w as rep orted to be


marching to Madras . I n F ort St . George much

anx i ety as to the purpose of h is vis it , and of the

Governor and Council various protect ive measures were

immediately proclaimed . The proclamat ion i s to'

be found

in ful l i n the Company ’ s M inutes and we find’an amus ing

rem inder of the Company’s mercanti le m i somd

’

é tr e in the

fact tha t immediately after the mi l i tary ed icts comes the

order That all the Company ’ s cloth be brought from the

washers,washed and unwashed , to prevent i t s being p lun

dered .

’

The Nawab came , and he uttered threats , but he

was moll ified wi th luxur i ous enter ta inmen t . I nvit ing

h imsel f and h is dewan and his Chamberlain to d inner with

the Governor and Counc i l lors in the F ort , he was rece ived

w i th impos ing honours,and was feasted in the Counc i l

Chamber at a magn ificen t banquet . The minutes relate

that after d inner he was diverted with the dancing

wenches,

” and finally b e got very Drunk . A t break fast

the nex t day in the Company’ s

‘

Garden ,’ H is H ighness

again got very drunk and fel l a S leep ; and a few.

day s

later he marched h i s army away . I n h is sober moment s ,however , he had been slyly measur ing the Company

’s

streng th and s ix mon ths later he came back with a large r

force,and blockaded Madras . He p lundered all that he

could,and on one occas ion his spoi l included 40 ox loads

of the Company ’s C loth .

”For more than three months the

blockade con t inued , and the Company’s trade was ent ire ly

s topped , and prov i s i ons in Madras were exceed ing ly scarce .

Da-ud Khan , eventual ly wearying of the unsuccess ful s i ege ,named the pr i ce that would buy him off ; and the Council ,

fear ing the wrath of the D irectors at the loss of their trade ,were glad to come to terms . The Company ’s M inute on

the occas ion is a brie f bu t exul tant record :‘The s i ege

i s raised l,’

I n 1 746 there was a s iege of a more serious sort .

Eng land and F rance were at war in Europ e , and sudde nly

.


An old -world feel ing comes

thehighroad and make our way do passage

and acros s the drawbridge over the massi ve

gates and under the echoing tunnel that leads tlirough the

migh ty walls . Wi thin we see the parapets on which in bygone days the cannon thundered at the

, f oe . We pass

on into’

the great Spaces of the Fort and in our imaginat ion

CLlVE'S HOUSE

we can peopl e them with ghosts of the i l lustr ious— or

notor ious— dead . I t was here that , in the reign of King

James the Second,Master E l ihu Yale assumed the

Governor sh ip of Madras , did hard work in the Company’

s

behalf but also made a large fortune for h imsel f , lost h i s

son aged four , quarrel led long and bitterly with his

counc i l lor s, and w as at las t super seded . I t w as here that

FORT ST. GEORGE 17

Robert Clive , aged n ineteen , newly arri ved from England ,entered up on h is dut ies as an apprent iced writer in the

Company ’s serv ice , at a salary of five pounds per annum

i t was here , in St. Mary’s Church , e igh t years la ter ; when

he had won h is first laurels , that he married the s i ster of

one of the fellow -writers of h is g r i ffinhood ; and i ts w as

here,in Cl ive

’

s House ,’ which i s st i l l to be seen (now the

O ffice of the A ccountan t-Gener al ) , that he l ived wi th his

wife . The ancient Counc i l Chamber i s replete w ith

h istoric associat ions ; and St . Mary’s Church offer s

material for many researchful and meditat ive V i s i ts . The

s treets have hi story in their names . Charles-and James

Street,

’ for example , which is a present -day combina t ion

of two streets of yore , is joint ly commemorative of the

days of the Merry Monarch and of h is roya l but unfor tu

nate brother . Enough"I t is not my purpose to producea guide-book to Madras , but to promote an apprec iat ion of

the h istor i c Interests of the city ; and I take i t that the

reader has real ized that Fort St . Georg e i s interest ingindeed .

CHAPTER IV

DEVELOPMENT

When an Engl i sh colony had se tt led down in F ort St .George , i t w as only to be expected that a tow n w ould

spring up outside . The personal necessi ti es of the nume

rous colonists had to be suppl ied , and purveyors and

bazau men and workmen made themselves read i ly avai lable for the supply . The requ i rements in resp ec t of the

Company ’s mercan t i le bus iness w ere yet grea ter . The

Company’

s agents wanted not only nat i ve employees i n

the ir office —i

dubashes’

andi

sh rofi’

s’ and clerks and

i n terp reters and porters and peons , but they al so wanted

whole sale buyers of the cloth and other art icle s that they

imported from Eng land for sale , and also merchan ts who

could supply them w i th larg e quan t i t ies of the I ndian

wares that the Company expor ted to Eng land ; and they

were ab le to get the men that they wanted .

A crowd attrac ts a crowd ; and when once a town has

begun to grow , i t goes on growing of its own accord and

ten years after the acquisi t ion of Madras , the populat ion

of the town was est imated at as many as souls .

The F ort itself , moreover , had to be enlarg ed ; for the

grow th of the Company’s business meant that more and

more factors and wri ters had to be brought out from

Eng land , and more and more warehouses had to be prov i ded

for the mult ipl ied wares ; and , moreover , the increas ing

lawlessness of the t imes necess itated a larger garr i son .

Outs ide the Fort , I nd ian and other immigrants flocked

from near and far to settle down with in the Company’ s

DE VELOPMEN T 1 9

domains , looking,

for p rofit under the white men’s p rotec

t ion ; and , with their enterp r i sing sp ir i t , they played no

small part in the developmen t of Madras .

The tow n that g rew up outs ide the l i ttle fort was d iv ided

into two sect ions— 3 the Wh i te Tow n and the Black

Town .

’

The boundaries of White Town corresp onded

roughly wi th what are now the boundar ies of F ort S t .George i tsel f . The or ig inal B lack Town— f Old BlackTown -Covered what i s now the vacant g roun d that l i e sbetween the Fort and the Law College , and included what

are now the sites of the Law Coll ege and the H igh Cour t

(v i de Map , p . The inhabi tants of Whi te Town included

any Bri t i sh settlers not i n the Company ’s serv ic e whose pre

sence the Company approved , also al l approv ed Portuguese

and Euras ian immig rant s from My lapore , and a er ta in

number of app roved Indian Chr i st ian s . Whit Town

indeed was somet imes cal l ed the Chri st ian Town .

’ Black

Town was the A s iatic se t tl emen t . The grea t maj ority of

t he or ig inal I ndian sett lers were not Tamil ians but Telugus—w ri tten down as Gentoos in the Company

’s Records.The Company

’

s agents encourag ed peop le of various

races to reside in Madras ; and the name s of some of the

st ree ts and d i str icts of the town are interest ing testimon ies

as to the vari ety of the people who came .A rmen ian S treet— which began as an A rmen ian burial

g round (v ide Map , p . 10) — is an example . A rmen ians from

Pers ia , l ike the ir fel low -countrymen the Parsees , have

a racial g i ft for commerce ; and A rmenian merchants had

been in India long before the Engl ish arr ived . Enterp r is

ing A rmen ian merchants settled in Madras in i ts earl y

days to trade with the Engl ish colon ists,and the Company ’s

ag en ts were glad to have as middlemen such able mer

chants who were in close touch with the p eople of the land .

The most celebrated of the earl ier A rmen ians in Madras

was Peter U soan , A rmenian by race but Roman Cathol ic


i n rel igion , who l ived in Madras for more than fo rty years ,t i l l his death there in 1 75 1 , at the age of seventy . He was

a r ich and publ ic -spir ited merchant . He bu i l t the Marma

long Bridge over the Adyar ri ver , on one of the pil lars of

which a quaint inscri pt ion is st i l l t o be read , and he left afund for its maintenance ; he also renewed the mult i tude

o f ston e steps that lead up to the top of St . Thomas ’s

Mount . H is inscribed tomb i s to be seen in the church

yard of the Angl ican Church of S t . Matth ias , Vepery , which

in olden days was the chuchyard of a Roman Cathol ic

chapel . Within the last hal f-century the A rmenian com

munity i n Madras has been rapid ly decl in ing , as the resu lt ,probably , of inab i l i ty to cope with the bustling s tyle of

commerc ial compet i t i on in these latter days ; and only a

very few represen ta t ives o f the race are now to be seen in

the c i ty .

In M int Stree t there is a small enclosure which is the

remains of w hat w as once a J ewish c emetery of cons ider

ab le s ize ; and the graves that are st i l l to be seen are

in terest ing reminders of the fact that in bygone t imes there

w as a Hebrew colony in Madras . I n more than one of

the Company’s old records the J ew s in Madras are referr ed

to as be ing r ich men , some of whom held pos i t ion s of h igh

c i v ic author ity . Some of them were Engl ish J ews , and

o th ers were Portuguese and most of them were diamond

merchants , on the look-out for diamonds from the mines of

Golconda , which were formerly very product ive . The

English J ews exported diamonds to England, and imported

s i lver and coral to Madras ; coral was in great demand in

I ndia , and was sent ou t by J ewish firms in London .

There is s t i l l a Coral M erchants’ Stree t i n Madras , a

conti nuation of A rmenian Street , and it is a l iving reminder

of th e old J ew ish colony . The Golconda mines eventually

ceased to be productive , and J ew ish diamond merchants

are no longer to be seen in the c ity , and the J ewish colony

DE VELOPMEN T 2 1

has long since d i sappeared . J ew s are notor ious al l the

w orld over as money -lenders , and i t may p erhap s be won

d ered why none of them survived as money -l enders in

Madras ; but the fact that Coral M erchan ts’ Street is now

the hab i tat of N attukot ta i Chet t ies , w ho are past -masters

i n the art of money-lending , suggests that even the J ews

were unab l e to compe te w i th Madras sow cars i n the busi

ness of usury , and that the Chet t ies d isplaced the J ews

who used to l i ve in the street . The l i tt le J ewish cemetery

in crowded M int Stree t i s ah ' interest ing spot . One of the

antique tomb-stones has been caught in the branch of a treeand has been l i fted h igh in ai r, and i s a qua int sigh t and

the deserted l i ttle H ebrew g raveyard i tsel f i s symbol i c of

the d ispers ion of the ancien t people .

I t i s a curious fact that the Company ’ s employees in

South I nd ia never spoke of Indian Mohammedans as

Mohammedans or as Moslems or as Mussalmans,but

always as Moors . ’ I t is thus that the name of Moor

S treet ’ i s to be accounted for . The original’

Moors

Street ’ was a street in which M ohammedans used to

l ive , and the fact tha t one part icular street in a large

C i ty should have borne such a name is evidence ofanother fact , namely , that in the earl ier years of Madras

very few Mohammedans res ided in the town . I t should

be remembered that Madraspatnam , Tri pl icane , Egmore ,and the other hamlets that went to make up the c i ty

of Madras were al l of them H indu v i l lages ; and i t

was only now and again that Mohammedans , in some

capac ity or another, found thei r w ay into the town . I n theearl ier years of Madras a sing l e mosque su fficed for al l the

few Mohammedans there in . The mosque was located in

Moors Street in old Black Town , a street that was the

predecessor of the Moor St reet ’ of tod ay . I t was not

t i l l near ly fifty year s after the acqu i s i t ion of the s ite ofMadras that a s econd mosque was buil t— in M uth ialpet ;


and these two smal l mosques suppl ied Mohammedan

requ irements for many years . The fact i s that M adras

w as so frequen t ly troubled by successi ve M ohammedan

enemies— the King of Golconda ; Da-ud Khan , N awab of

the Carnat ic ; Haidar A l i , Sul tan of Mysore ; h i s son

Ti pu , and others— tha t the Company w as d i sposed to

regard al l Moors ’ wi th mistrust , so much so that they

d i scouraged M ohammedan res idents ; and a measure wa s

passed with the spec ial in ten tion‘

to p revent the Moors

purchas ing too much land in the B lack Tow n .

’

There

are larg e crowds of Mohammedans in Madras now , g rouped

especial ly in Chepauk and the adj o in ing Tr ipl icane and

Royapettah ; and this is due to the fact that in later days

N aw ab Walajah of A rcot , who was friendly to the Engl i sh ,came and settled down in Madras . He bui lt Chepauk Palace

for hi s res idence , and the many Mohammedans who fol

lowed h im in to the C i ty formed the nucleus of a large

M ohammedan colony .

The name China Bazaar appears early in th e Madras

Records and i t would seem to have been the p laCe where

Ch inese crockery w as on sale . Whether or not the sales

men were Ch inese immigrants I cannot say but the fac t,

that ano ther street in Madras bears the name of Ch inam an

Stree t suggests that there was at one t ime a colony of pig

tai led yellow -men in the c i ty . The suppos i t ion i s not

unl ikely , for China was included within the sphere of the

Company’ s commercial operat i ons , w i th Madras as the

head -quarters of the trade,and sh ips of the Company pl ied

regularly between China and Madras. Tea was one of the

art i cles of trade , bu t Chinese crockery w as i n g reat

demand in I ndia, and sh ip-loads of cheap China bowl s and

plates and dishes were imported ; and valuable spec imens

of Chinese porcelain were highly esteemed by w ealthy

I ndians— so much so that i t i s on record that one of the

Moghul emperors had a s lave put to death for hav ing


Washermanpet i s ano ther such local i ty . I t was not socalled , as many people imagine , for being a land of dhobies(male laundresses) . I n the Company ’s vocabulary a

washerman was a man who bleached“new -made

c loth ; and the Company employed a number of bleachers .The b leaching process needed large Open spaces— w ashing

greens— ou which the cloth could be laid ou t i n the sun tobe bleached ; and Washermanpet Covered a cons iderab learea .

A great many more of the stree ts and d ist r icts of Madrashave history in the ir names but the few tha t w e ~ have

dealt ~

w i th suffice to exempl ify the manner of the expan

s ion of the c i ty of Madras . We can p icture the rusticsuppl iers crowding into the c i ty to sell the produce of the ir

fi elds ; we can p icture the humb le weavers migrat ing into

the c i ty wi th the ir wives and the ir ch i ldren , and with the i r

pots and their pans and their quaint machines , i n response

to the Company’s tempt ing invi ta t ion we can p icture the

small tradesmen and the small mechan ics sett ing up thei r

humble shops i n the new ci ty in wh ich they , bel ieved,

tha t

fortunes were to be made . A nd in the higher g rades of

l i fe w e can pic ture the grave A rmenian merchants , the

submiss ive J ews,the mistrusted Moors , and others

seeking interviews with S tuart or Georgian-garbed factors

of the Company , and eager all of them to turn the Com

pany to profi table account .

CHAPTER V

THE WALL

Skirt ing a thoroughfare in O ld J ai l S treet , i n N orth

Georgetown , is sti l l to be seen a part of the Wall ’ that

protected Black Tow n i n bygone days . Th is i nterest ing

remnant of the Wall of Madras migh t before long have

been level led to the ground , e i ther by success ive monsoons

or by ph il i st ine con tractors i n want of material but ,with a happy regard for a rel ic of O ld Madras , the Madras

Government have recently undertaken the task of preserv

i ng the ru in,which they have o fficially declared an historic

memorial . ’

The Wal l of Madras i s worthy of a meditat ive v is i t ,but , i n order that the -m edi tat ion may be on an h istor ic

bas is , i t is necessary to know someth ing about the Wal l

i tsel f .

We have seen that when the Company establ i shed them

se lves at Madras , in 1 639 , they fi rst bui lt a smal l fort fo r

the protec t ion of themsel ves and their goods . A round th e

wal ls of the Fort a number of Chr i st ians— Engl i sh and

Portuguese and Euras ians— se tt led dow n , and what was

called Whi te Tow n came in to be ing . Within a term of

years th is White Tow n was i tsel f enclosed wi thin fort ified

walls , which were final l y ident ical wi th the wal l roundFort S t . George to-day. There was t hus a fort with in a

fort but in course of time the inner wall was pul led down .

Immediately outs ide the northern wal l of Whi te Town' lay Black Town , inhabited by Indians — employees and

purveyors of the Company , as well as merchants , shopk eeper s , industr ial ists , and the rest. I t should be borne in

26 THE STORY OF MADRAS

mind that the s i te of th is or iginal B lack Town w as

al tog e ther different from the s i te of the later B lack. Town ,the Georgetown of to -day . O ld Black Town , as already

explained , extended from the northern wall of the F ort to

what is now call ed the Esplanade Road , and i t covered the

ground that i s now taken up by the Wireless Te legraph

enclosure , the g rou nds of the H igh Court , and those of theLaw Col lege (v ide map , p . 1 0)Black Town w as at fir st without any wall , and , as the

t imes were unse tt l ed , the place was exposed to the ser ious

A B IT OF THE BLACK TOWN WALL

dang er of being raided by any adven turous band of

marauders . Very soon , however , a beginning was made

of enclosmg the town wi th a mud wal l ; and” i n the re ign

of Queen Anne a wall w as bu i lt wi th masonry . Mean

wh i le , moreover , numerous houses and streets had‘

sp rungup ou ts ide the wal l

,on t he s ite of the Georg etown of tod ay .

I n 1746 the F rench cap tured Fort S t . George ; and

they destroyed not only the B lack Town Wall but also

Black Town i tse lf . I t was a disastrous ep i sode in the

h istory of Madras . For s ix years the Eng l i sh and the

THE WALL ’

27

F rench had been at war in Europe , and the relat ions

between the Eng l i sh and F rench colon ists in I nd ia were

naturally stra ined but they were s et t ler s with in the dom in

ions of Indian rulers , and , although both the Eng l i sh and

the F rench had ships and soldiers for the p rotect ion of

the ir settlemen t s , they real ized that they were not at

l iberty to make war up on each other . The settl ers , more

over,were employees of mercanti le compan ies , working

for div idends ; and w ar , .w i th i ts calami tous expend i ture ,

was not within thei r des ign . But Duple ix , the talen ted

F rench Governor of Pondicherry , had amb it ious ideas for

the extens ion of French influence in I ndia , and , in defiance

of Indian rulers,war broke out . I n the beginn ing there

were several engagements at sea between a F rench

squadron under Labourdonnais and an Eng l ish squadron

under Captain Pey ton . The Engli sh squadron was worst

ed,and had to pu t in to Trincomalee Harbour , in Cey lon ,

to refit . Thereupon Labourdonnais , af ter mak ing qu i ck

preparat ions at Pond icherry,sailed for Madras ; and the

alarm in the For t and in the c i ty mus t have been g reat

when h is sh ips appeared off the coast and proceeded to

bombard the se tt lemen t . H is guns , however , did bu t

l i tt le damage , and the c it izens woke up the next morning

to find,to their great conten t , that the enemy had sai led

away during the nigh t . M eanwh i le Captain Pey ton ,hav ing repa ired his ships , was unaware of w hat had

happened at Madras , and sai led from Ceylon to Bengal ,w i thout touch ing at F ort St . Georg e . Possibly he was

l ured to Bengal by bogus messages of F rench or igin ; for ,as soon as he was out of the way , Labourdonnais t e

appeared off Madras , be t ter p repared than before . Having

succeeded in landing a considerable force , he erected

batter ies on shore and from var ious points h e bombarded

White Town,which was now the actual F ort St . George .

A t the end of an unhappy seven days the garr ison


capitulated . The F rench marched into the F ort , and al l the

Engl ish res idents , c ivi l and mil i tary— includ ing the Gover

nor and the Members of Counc i l , and also Robert Cl ive,who was then a young c lerk - were sent to Pondicherry as

pr isoners of w ar .

For nearly three years the F rench flag fl ew over Fort

St . Georg e , un t i l , in accordance wi th the Treaty of

CENTR AL GATE OF THE BLACK TOWN WA LL

A ix- la-Chapelle , made be tween the com ba tants in

Europe , Madras was restored to the Company .

D uring the i r occupat ion the F rench had made g reat

changes . F eeli ng the necess i ty of strengthen ing thei r

po sit ion, the ir mi l i tar y commanders real ized w hat had

apparently not been recognized by the Company’s em

p loyees, untrained in w ar — nam e ly that a weak-wal lednat ive town lying r ight aga inst the northern wal l of For t

THE WALL ’

29

St . George was a serious dang er . The houses offered

conven ient cover for any enemies that migh t attack the.

Fort ; and , moreover , any disaffected or venal townsman

was in a posit ion to g ive the assai lants valuable help .

The F rench Governor set h imse lf , therefore , to the del i

berate destruct ion of Black Town . He first destroyed

the Tow n Wall , and then— for a distance of 400 yards

from the northern wall of Whi te Town , or the presen t

For t St . George— he demol i shed every house . The area.

tha t i s now represented by the Wireless Telegraph S ta t ion

and the grounds of the H igh Court thus became an open

space . M eanwhile they constructed a moat and glacis

round the walls of Whi te Town , which , wi th certain altera

t ions , are the moat and glac i s of Fort S t . George to -day .

The Records express the melancholy interest with which.

the Company ’s employees , when they r e-en tered Madras,

took note of the changes that the enemy had made in the

fami l iar se ttlemen t . The Counci l lors apparen t ly conce ivedtha t i t was in a wan ton spiri t of destruction that thegrea ter par t of Black Tow n had been wiped out ; for they

formally decided that the streets that had been destroyed

should be rebu i lt . I t may be supposed however , that the i r

mil itary ady isers counsel led them otherwise ; for , so far

from the old houses be ing rebui l t , those that had been leftstand ing were destroyed . The Open space was al lowed to

remain ; and N ew Black Tow n — the modern’

Georg e

town — began to be developed . I t continued to be called’

Black Town ’ un t i l the v is i t of the Prince of Wales

(af terwards King George V ) to Madras in 1 906 when i t

was formally t e -named Georgetown -ostens ib ly i n

Prince George 's honour , bu t in real i ty to meet the wishes

of a number of the res iden t s who sough t an Opportuni ty of

gett ing rid of what they regarded— quite reasonably

—as an obj ec t ionable name for. the local ity in -which

their lot . w as cast . The d isappearance of the h i stor ic


name i s a matter for h istoric regret , but a concession had

to be made to the in tell ig ible wi shes of res idents .

The Company , bearing in mind that the F rench had

been able to capture Madras , real ized that i t w as necessaryto s tre ngthen the defences of F ort St . George and also to

provide adequate protection for the new nat i ve c ity that

had grown up outs ide the F ort ’ s protect ive wal ls and wasabsolutely without defence . The defences of the F or t

A MAGA Z I NE I N THE BLACK TOWN WALL

were taken in hand at once , though the work was by no

m eans completed ; and the D irectors i n Eng land read i l y

sanctioned the c onstruct ion of a wal l round N ew Black

Town . I t was wel l that the securi ty of the Fort was

l ooked to without any long delay ; for in 1 75 8 , a large

F rench army under Coun t Lally bes ieged the Fort again

b u t so unsuccessful ly that , after s ixty -seven days of pers is

t ent endeavour , they beat a sudden retreat . I t was a good .


s ucceeding Governor , to Ha idar A l i’s camp , on the other

s ide of the Marma long Bridg e, to come to terms wi th thei nvader and with in three days a treaty had been made.

The tr eaty , sa id Mr . DuPre, wri ting to a fri end , will dou s no honor : yet i t was necessary , and there was noa lternati ve but that or worse .”

A fter this humil ia t i on the bu i ld ing of the Wall w as

r egar ded as a press ing necess ity ; and with in a year thew ork w as pract ica lly fini shed .

‘

THE OLD AND THE NEw’

Corner of the Med ical Schoo l bu i lt into a portion of the

B lack Tow n Wal l .

I t was well indeed tha t the work was done ; for a few

y ears afterwards , on the 1 0th of A ugust , 1780, Haidar ’s

c aval ry raided San Thome and Tr ipl icane , kil l ing a numberof people and the terror in B lack Town was so great that

c rowds of the inhabi tants took fl igh t . For tunately , how

e ver , the Governor was ab le to i ssue the following not ifica

t ion for the reassurance of the publ ic . A su fficient

n umber of guns have been mounted on the B lack Town

wall ,’ and

‘nothing has,

been .om it ted that'

I can th ink off or the security of the B lack Town .

’ Haidar w as not

THE WA LL 33

suffi ciently venturesom e to attack the fort ified town ; but

the terror of the inhabitan ts was by no means at an end

for a l ittle later came the disastrous news that a B r i t i sh

force sent out to meet the invader had been cu t to piece s

at Conjeevaram . E ven tual ly , however , the Mysoreans

were defeated,and the treaty of peace w as a tr iumph for

the Company .

The long delay in the bui lding of the Wall was ch iefly

due to the fact that the representat ive s of the Company ,be ing commercial men , naturally gave thei r ch ief attent ion

to the Company ’s mercant i le business , and were apt to

disregard the immediate necess i ty of expens ive schemes

wh ich the Company’s mil itary officers put forward as

strateg ic requirements . When the Wal l was first talked

abou t , after the recovery of Madras from the F rench , the

D irectors in England , who always kept a t ight hand on the

Company’s purse-strings , declared that the inhabitants of

B lack Tow n ough t to be made to pay for the cost of the ir

own defences , and Should be taxed accord ing ly ; and thename of the

‘

Wall Tax Road ,’

w h ich runs alongs ide the

Cen tral Stat ion to the Salt Cotau rs , i s a standing reminder

of the D irectors ’ decree,whi le the road itself i s an ind ica

t ion of the al ignmen t of the western wal l . The peop le

protested indignan tly against being taxed for the purpose ,and , as a matter of fact , the representat ives of the Company

in I nd ia doubted w hether they would be w ithin the ir legal

r ights in compell ing them to pay ; and the tax was never

actually levied . What with the Wal l Tax Road on the

west and the seashore on the east,th e ex ist ing remains on

the north , and the E sp lanade on the south , i t i s not difficult

to form a general idea of the di rect ion of the four sides o f

the wall with in which the later B lack Town was encl osed.

Such is the story of The Wall ; and the remains are

an interesting rel ic of lawless t imes when at any minutei t was poss ible that crowds of terror-str icken fo lk would


suddenly he pouring through the gateways of the c i tyat the alarming news that str ange horsemen were dashing

here and there in one or another of the suburbs , demanding

money and j ewel s from the people and slaughtering

unhappy ind ividuals who t ried to evade a response.

CHAPTER V I

EXPANS ION

We have seen that the Company were careful to develop

b oth White Town and Black Town . They were not

c onten t , however , with mere developments , for they took

pain s also to extend the ir terri torial possess ions .

The strip of land that was acquired by M r . F ranc i s Day

was not large . Rough ly , i t extended along the seashore

from the mou th of the Cooum to an undefined point beyond

the present harbour , somewhere in the neighbourhood of

Cass imode , and in land as far as what was cal led the N orth

R iver , which i s now represen ted by Cochrane ’s Canal

the canal that run s between the Central S tation and the

People ’s Park . I t wi ll be interest ing to note how some of

t he various other part s of the present c i ty came into the

Company’s possess ion .

On several occas ions the representat ives of var ious

dynasties that w ere success ively supreme over Madras made

g ran ts of add itional land to the Company . The vi l lage of

Tr ip l icane was the first addit ion , some twenty years

a fter the acquis i t ion of Madras . The vil lage was granted

by the representat ive of the M ohammedan King of Gol

conda,fOr an annual rent of Rs . 1 75 , which ceased to be pa id

when the Golconda dynasty shortly afterward s came to an

end . Later , in compl iance with a pet i t ion by GovernorE l ihu Yale to the Emperor Aurangzeb , the Company

rece ived a free gran t of Taudore (Tondiarpe t) , Per sew acca

(Pursew aukam) , and"

Yegmore Sti l l later,in

the reign of Aurangzeb’

s son and successor,th e v i l lag e

EXPANSI ON 37

o f Lungambacca (Nungumbaukam ) , now the pr incipal res i

d ential district of Europeans in Madras , was gran ted to the

Company , together with four adjo in ing v i l lages , for a total

annual rent of pagodas (say Rs . The Emper

o r’

s officers argued that the rent ough t to have been larger ,but the Company

,conform ing to the spiri t of corrup t ion

tha t was in fash ion,were wily enough to send by a Brahman

and a Mohammedan conjointly a sum of Rs . 700 to be

d i stribu ted among st the King’ s officers who ke ep the

Records , in order to settle th is matter .’

The v i l lage Of

Vepery— variously called in olden documents I pere , Yper e ,V ipery

,and Vapery

— lay between Egmore and Purse

w aukam ; and the Company , be ing natural ly desirous ofconsol idat ing the ir terr itory , proceeded at once to try to

obtain a grant of the place ; but success ive effort s on the

part of Governor E l ihu Yale came to naugh t ; and i t w as

not t i l l much later ( 1742) when the Nawab of A rcot w as

lord of the soil , that Vepery was acquired from the N awab .

The manner of its acquis i t ion i s in terest ing . The preceding

N awab had j us t been murdered , and the Carnat ic armyd i sow n ing the ambit i ous r ival w ho had murdered h im

,

proclaimed the dead Nawab’s son as h i s successor . The

new Nawab was but a youth,and he was resid ing at the

t ime in one of the b ig houses in Black Tow n . The

Company were pol i ti c enough to celebrate the lad ’s acces

s ion wi th grand doings . They escorted him in a sp lendid

process ion to the Company ’ s Gardens , w h ich were si tuated

a long the bank of the r i ver Cooum , where the General

Hosp ital and the Medical Col leg e now stand . I n the

Gardens there was a fine house , contain ing a spac ious hall ,which t he Company had Specially designed for great occa

s ions and there the lad ’s access ion was formally announced

and finally he was escorted in procession back to h i s

dwell ing . The Company p rofited by their poli t i c demon

s trat ion ; for , in return for their courtes ie s to the young


Nawab , the lad gratified their des ires by mak ing them a

ren t -free grant of the V i l lage of V epery , and also of Peram

bore and other lands . I t may be added that the boy -k ingw as unfortunate for he was murdered with in two years of

his access ion , at the instance of the man who had murdered

hi s father .

San Thomew as acquired in 1 749 and the story of theacqui si t ion i s not without interest . The names

‘San Thome’

and Mylapore are often used as alternat ive des ignat ion s

for one and the same local ity but in bygone days the two

names represen ted quit e d ifferent places . Mylapore was a

very anc ient Indian town , which seems to have been in

ex i stence long before the birth of Christ . San Thom é was

a seven teen th century Portuguese settlement Close by . I t i san old tradi t ion that St . Thomas the A postle was martyred

just ou ts ide Mylapore and when the Portuguese fi rst came

to India some of them v i sited Mylapore to look for rel ics

of the sa int . They found some ruined Christ ian churches,

and also a tomb which they bel ieved to be the tomb of St .

Thomas and soon afterwards a Portuguese monastery

was establ i shed on the spot . A Portuguese tow n grew up

around the monas tery ; and in course of t ime th e town

became a commercial centre , and w as surrounded with a

for t ified wal l , and w as the Portuguese settlement of San

Thome, over against the I ndian town of Mylapore . An

I tal ian dealer in prec ious stones who v i s ited I ndia in the

sixteenth century wrote of San Thome that i t was as fai r

a c i ty as any that he had seen in the land and he descr i

bed Mylapore as being an Indian C i ty surrounded by it s

ow n mud wall . Mylapore was thus in effect the Black‘

Town of San Thome bu t in later days the two town s were

comb ined . When the Eng l i sh came to Fort St . George,

the power of the Por tuguese was already w an ing and the

deve lopment of the infl uence of the Eng l i sh at Madras

meant a further lessening of the influence of the Portuguese

40 THE STOR Y OF MADRA S

N awab with men and money whenever he should call upon

them to do so . I t w as thus that San Thome became a

Bri t i sh possession and , al though i t was af terwards ravaged

success ively by the F rench under Coun t Lally and by

Haidar A li of M ysore,i t has remained a Bri t i sh possess ion

ever s ince .

We have said enough to show the manner in which the

differen t parts of the modern C i ty of Madras came into the

hands of the Engl i sh . The methods were not always

whol ly adm irabl e ; but we must remember that the East

I nd ia Company was a mercan t i le assoc iat i on , fig hting for

i ts ex i stence under d iamond-cu t -diamond condi t ions ; and

w e must remember also that,although i ts representat ives

at Madras were sent ou t to I ndia not to rule bu t to earnd iv idends for the shareholders

,yet the Company ’s rule

over Madras was so upright that crowds of people were

con t inually flocking in to Madras to enjoy its benefits .

CHAPTER VI I

OUTPOSTS

The suburban lands which were successively granted to

the Company were not protected e i ther by the walls of

F ort St . George or by the wal l s of B lack Town , and it was

according ly necessary that Special means should be adopted

for the ir defence . The Company ’s mi l i tary engineers

dev i sed th e erect ion of smal l suburban forts redoubts

block -houses,and batter ies , wh ich were to be mounted wi th

cannon and to be in charge of an appropriate garri son , and

were to serve as outposts for the protect ion of the outly ing

q uarters of the C i ty .

On the northern s ide of B lack Town the batter ies and

block -houses were l inked together by a th ick -set hedge of

palmyras,bamboos , prickly -pear , and thorny bushes , such

that nei ther in fantry nor cavalry could force a way through .

Later i t was decreed that the Bound Hedg e ,’

as i t wascalled , should be extended so as to enc ircle the whole c ity .

The work , however , was never completed , for as late as1 785 an influen t ial European inhab itant of Madras , address

ing the Government on the subj ect of the insecur i ty of the

c i ty , w rote

Was the Bound Hedge fin ished , no man cou ld desert , No Spy

cou ld pass prov is ions w ou ld be cheap . A l l the Garden Hou ses ,

as w el l as thirty-three Square M i les of Ground , w ou ld be in

security from the invas ions of irregu lar Horse .

Of the suburban fort ifica tions the tw o largest were atEgmore and at San Thome. N ext in s ize were those atNungumbaukam and at Pur sew aukam . Of smaller works

there were many . Of the fort ificat ions at N ungumbaukam

OUTPOSTS

and at Pur sewaukam al l traces have d isappeared ; but of

the larger ones at San Thomé and at Egmore inter est i ng

remains are sti l l to be seen .

The remains of the San ThomeRedoubt s tand with in the

grounds of Lei th Cast l e ,’ a house that l ies south of the

San Thome Cathedral . The remains are ru ins , but the

mass ive wall s fifteen feet h igh and three feet th ick, ar e

suggest i ve of the purpose for wh ich the redoubt was bu i lt .

The Records show that the San ThomeRedoubt , bui lt in

175 1 , was a very comple te fort ification , with a moat forty

feet wide , a glac i s , and all the other works that are usual

in respect of a w ell app oin ted bui ld ing of the k ind . That

i t was of a large s ize i s to be seen in the fact that , when the

F rench under Count Lally were bes ieging Madras,an

Eng l ish officer was offi cial ly d i rected to stay in St . Thome

F ort wi th the Europeans belong ing to Chingl eput , four

Compan i es of sepoys , and fi fty horse .’

The Egmore Redoubt w as a good deal older than that of

San Thome. I t was constructed in the days of Queen

A nne . I t was in tended , of course , for the special p ro tec

t ion of Egmore ; but in those d istan t days when t r ips to

the hi lls were unknown,even Egmore was a heal th - resort in

. respect of the crowded Fort St . Georg e , and i t was offic i

ally reported that the Egmore Redoubt might serv e for

a conven ience for the s ick Soldiers when arr ived from

Eng land , for the recovery of their health , i t being a g ood

air . ’ The Egmore Redoubt w as ev ident ly a need ; for

the Records ’ tell us that on var ious occas ions i t s g uns

were fired at the enemy . The enemy were for the most

part horsemen of Haidar Al i or of Tipu , hi s son and suc

cessor ; and in 1 799 the y ear in w hich Ti pu was k i l led,

the need for the Redoub t disapp eared . A dj oin ing the

p recincts of the Redoubt were the premises of the Male

A sy lum ,an A nglo-I ndian Orphanage , which required to

be extended , and in the fol lowing year the Madra s


Governmen t gave the Redoubt to the A sy lum ,and the two

premi se s were turned into a common enclosure . In the

beg inn ing of the presen t century the D irectors of the

A sylum sold thei r Egmore es tate to the South Indian

Rai lway Company and removed to new premises in the

Poonamallee road ; and what remains of the Egmore

Redoubt i s now the hab i tat ion of some of the Rai lw ay

employ ees .

TH E EGMORE F ORT (S I DE V I EW)

The remains are of quaint interes t . A t some date or

another the authorit ies of the A sy lum had an upper story

added to one of the m il itary build ings , w ith the resul t

that th ere i s the strang e sp ec tacle of a row of windowed

c hambers on the top of a but tressed and batt lemen ted wal l ,w indow less and grim . The upper story has been bui l t in to

t he“bat t lemen ts in such a manner that th e outl ine of the

bat tlements i s st i l l c learly vis ible , and the bui ld ing is a

c ompos i t e reminder of old -t ime war and latter-day peace .


The whole of the lower part of the bui ld ing , with its mas

s ive walls and i ts frown ing aspect , is of curious and

suggest i ve interest and the ground around , w h ich is ex ten

s ively br icked , i s a reminder of the fac t that the Redoubt

in i ts or iginal form was large indeed . The place provides

in teresting material for ant iquarian sp eculat ion .


an t ipapist as Queen E l izabeth , there was a Roman Cathol ic

church with a pri est in char g e , yet ne ither a church nor a

pas tor of the establ ished rel ig ion .

I n 1 645 , however , the Company’s Agent at F ort St .

George forwarded to h igher'

author i ty a pet it ion from the

sou ldi ers for the des i re ing of a min ister to be here w i th

them for the maintainance of the ir soules health and in

the fol lowing year a chaplain was sent ou t . There w as

st i l l no Protestan t church , but the celebrat ion of re l ig i ous

serv ices was held in carefu l regard ; for the chaplain read

morning and evening prayers every day of the year in a

room in the F ort appointed for the purpose , and it was

compulsory upon all the youthful employees of the Com

pany to at tend regularly , under the penalty of a fine .

Chapla ins came and chaplains went , and for some

s i xte en years they cont inued the ir min i strat ions i n the

room in the Por t . A smal l church was then bui lt ; but,with the Company

’s developing trade,the populat ion of

White Town increas ed so rapidly that before long the

l i ttl e Church was too smal l for the number of the worsh ippers . When M r . St reyn sham Master , after a long t erm of

years in the Company ’s service , w as appointed Governor

of Madras , one of h i s first acts was the circulation of a

voluntary subscription paper for the bui ld ing of a church

that should be worthy of the Company ’ s rapidly develop ing

South Ind ian possess i on . He headed the l ist with a

subscrip t ion of a hundred pagodas (Rs . a sum wh ich

rep resented much more than it does now ; for i t was

more than M r . Streynsham Master ’ s pay for a whole

month as Governor of Madras . Subscri pt ions from the

Counc i l lors , as well as from the factors and wri ters and

app rent ices , were proport i onately big ; and on the 28th of

October, 1 680 , St . Mary

’ s Church was solemnly opened ,and the guns of the F ort roared forth loud vol leys in

honour of the event . The steeple and the sanctuary were

THE CHURCH IN THE FORT 49

added later ; but , for the rest , the pre sent church , except

for details,is the very same church that was bui lt some

two hundred and fi fty years ago , in the reign of Char les I I' .

I t i s in terest ing to note that the church at M adras w as

bu i lt during a per iod when in London a great many

churches were be ing bui l t— or rebui lt— after the Grea t

F ire . Church -bui ld ing w as in vogue , with the dist ingu ish

s r. MARY ' S,FORT s r . GEO RCE .

ed Sir Christopher Wren as the bui lder in chief ; and it

is not unl ikely that what was be ing done so energet ical lyin London was one of the influences that inspired Mr .

Str eynsham Master to be so earnest over a scheme for

bui ld ing a Church in Madras .'

I t may be noted , moreover ,that St. Mary ’ s Church with in the Fort at Madras is of a

sty le that was very much in fashion in London at the t ime.

4


In dec id ing to bu i ld a new church , the Governor and h is

colleagues realized that i f ever the'

For t should be bombard

ed , a shot from the enemy ’s gun s was as l ikely to fal l

upon the church as upon a fort ified bas tion ; so the roof

of the chur ch w as made bomb-proof,’ in preparat ion for

poss ibil i ties . Events proved the reasonableness of the'

measur e ; for on more than‘

one occas i on the church was a

fac tor in w ar .

In 1746, when the F rench were bes i eging Fort St .

George , the Briti sh defenders lodged th eir wives and

ch i ldren and th eir domestic servants in the bomb-proof

church , and they took refuge there themselves in the

in ter vals of mil i tary duty . D uring the three years that

they occupied Madras , the F rench , fear ing that they might

be bes i eged in their turn , used the bomb-proof church as a

storehouse for grain and as a reservoir for drink ing-water .The church organ they sent off to Pond icherr y as one of

the spoi ls of w ar .

A t the end of the w ar Madras was restored to the Company , but a few year s later the F ort was bes ieged by the

F rench again . Dur ing the in terval , some of the houses

had been made bomb-proof , and in these the women and

Children were lodged , but S t . Mary ’s Church was used as

a barrack , and i ts steeple as a watch -tower . Lally, the

F rench commander , fai l ing to capture Madras, had to

mar ch away with hi s hopes baffled ; but , notwithstanding

its bomb-proof roof , the church , as al so its steeple , had

been badly damaged during the destruct ive s i ege , and the

necessary repa i rs were consi derable.

A few year s later the Engl ish had thei r revenge. Theycaptured Pondicherry , and they destroyed i ts fort ifications .

They recovered , wi th other th ings , the organ that had

been looted fr om St . Mary’s but , as a new one had in the

meanwhi le been obtained for St . Mary’

s, the r ecover ed

instrument w as sen t to a church up-country . According

THE CHURCH IN THE F ORT 1

to accounts, moreover , they took toll for the F renchmen’

s

lootlby isending to St . Mary’s from one of the Churches in

Pondicherry the large and well-executed paint ing of theLast Supper ,

’ which is sti l l to be seen in the church .

Theor igin of the picture i s not known for certa in but i ti s bel i eved with reason to be a fact tha t i t was a spo i l ofwar from Pondicherry on one or another of the three

occas ions on which that town was captured by the Brit ish .

The stray vis itor who wanders round St . Mary ’s without

a guide is apt to be astonished at what he sees in the

churchyard . A multi tude of old tombstones , of variousages and with inscriptions in various tongues , li e flat on

the ground , as close to one another as pav ing-stones , insuch fash ion that the vis itor must wonder how there can

be sufl‘i c ient room for coffi ns below . A s a matter of fact,

the cofli ns and their contents are not there , and the inscr ipt ions of H ere Iyeth and H ic jacet are not sta tements

of facts . The explanation i s an i nterest ing story , wh ich

is worth the tell ing .

I n the Company ’s early days,the

’

Engl ish Bury ing Place,’

(vide Map , p . 1 0) lay a l it tle w ay ou tside the wall s ofWhiteTown , in an area wh ich i s now occupied by the MadrasLaw College wi th its immediate prec inc ts . Later

,when

a wall was bui lt round old B lack Town , the Bur ialGround was included with in the enclosure of the wal l . An

Engl ish cemetery in a corner of an Indian town w as not

l ikely to be treated with any part icu lar respect ; and on

various counts the Engl ish Bury ing Place was a sadlyneg lected spot . N early every Engl ishman that di ed in

Madras w as an employee of the Company , and w as a

bachelor , without any relat ives in I ndia to mourn his loss

His colleagues gave him a grand funeral ; but h is deathmeant promotion for some of those selfsame col leagues,and his place in the Company ’s service was fi lled up by an

ofli c ial Order on the fol low ing day . A big monument

52 THE STORY OF MA DRA S

in the old -fashioned brick-and -mortar ugliness was pious ly

bui lt over his remain s , and possibly there was genuineregret at a good fel low

’s loss ; but water is less th ick than

blood , and there w as no near one or clear one in I ndia to

take aflec t ionate care of the big tomb ; so it was le ft to

itself to be taken care of by the people of Black Town '

.

"A ll unoffi cial descr iption of Madras dated 17 1 1 speaks of

the‘Stately Tombs ’ in the Engl i sh ceme tery

,and an offi cia l

Record of the same year sp eaks of the unhallowed use s

to which the stately tombs were put . The Record says

that Excesses are Com i t ted on hallowed g round , and

that the ar caded monumen ts were turned into receptac les

for Beggars and Buffaloes We have seen in a previous

chapter that the F rench , when they captured Madras,

demoli shed the greater part of old Black Town together

wi th its wall , and tha t the Engl ish , when they were back

in Madras , completed the work of demol i t ion . I n the

t w o -fold destruct ion , both F rench and Engli sh had sufhcient respect for the dead to leave the tombs alOne . But

,

now that B lack Town w as gone , the b ig tombs were the

nearest bui ld ings to the walls of White Town and Fort St .—George ; and when the F rench under Lally besieged

Madras a few years later , they used the stately Tombs

as convenient cover for the ir attack on the ci ty . The

cemetery now was a receptacle not for beggars and buf

faloes but for soldiers and guns . The s iege lasted s ix ty‘ seven day s , during which the cemetery was a vantag e

ground for success ive F rench batteries . I t is therefore

not to be wondered at that when Count Lally had raised

the unsuccessfu l s iege , the authori t ies at F ort St . George

dec ided that the s tate ly tombs were to di sappear . The

tombs themselves were accordingly destroyed , but the

Slabs that bore the inscr ipt ions were la id in St . Mary’s

churchyard . A t a later date some of them were taken up

and were removed to the ramparts , for the ex traordinary

THE CHURCH IN THE FORT 5 3

purpose of bui ld ing platforms for the guns ,1 but eventu

al ly they were restored to the churchyard and werere laid as we see them to-day .

When the burying g round was d isman t led , two of‘

i ts

monumen ts were allowed to remain . They are st i l l to be

s een on the E splanade , ou tside the Law College , and the

inscrip t ions can sti l l be read ; and the two tombs are

interest ing memorials of the past . One is a tall , steep l e

l ike structure , which represents a woman’ s g ri e f fo r her

first husband , and for her child by her second . Her

first husband was J oseph Hynm er s , Sen ior Member of

Counci l , who died in 1 680, her second was E l ihu Yale ,Governor of Madras , whom she married s ix month s af ter

the death of her first . When her l i tt le son David di ed a t

the age of four,she had him buried in her first husband’s

grave . The other monumen t covers a vaul t which holds

the remains of var ious members of the Powney family , a

name which figured freely in the l i st of the Company’s

emp loyees throughou t the eighteen th century . When the

c eme tery was d isman tled , members of the Powney family

w'

ere st i l l in the Madras serv ice,and i t w as doubtless in

respect for thei r fee lings that the vault was not di sturbed .

‘

I t may be added that amongst the gravestones that

pave the ground ou ts ide S t . Mary ’ s Church there are

several that record the death of Roman Cathol ics . I t is

supposed that they w ere taken from the g raveyard of the

Roman Cathol ic church in Whi te Town , which was demo

l ished by the Company when they recovered Madras after

the F rench occupat ion .

A lthough the gravestones around St . Mary ’ s Church

bear the names of persons who were buried elsewhe r e ,there are memorials wi thin the church i tself wh ich mark

s the ac tual rest ing -place of mor tal remains . Most of the

1 Rev . F . Penny’

s Ch‘

u r ch'

i n Madr a s , p. 366 :


monuments in St . Mary's are of h istor ic interest , and it

is fasc inating indeed to strol l round the bui ld ing and study

S toried u rn or an imated bust

but i t i s noteworthy that no inscr ipti on records the very

fi rst burial w i th in the walls of the church . I t is note

worthy too that the forgotten grave was not th e grave of an

obscure person , but of Lord P igot , Governor of Madras ;and, in vi ew of the ex traord inary c i rcumstances of h is

death , the first burial i s the most notable of al l .

George Pigot was sen t ou t to Madras as a lad of eigh teen ,to take up the post of a wri te r in th e Company ’s serv ice.

He worked so wel l that he rose rapid ly , and at the earlyage of th irty-S ix he w as appointed Governor of Madras .

I t was in the middle of h is e ight years’ governorsh ip that theF rench under Lal ly bes i eged Madras for six ty -five days ;and Governor P igot’s unt i r ing

‘energy and sk ilfu l measures

were pr ime factors in the successful defence . A fter the

war he did great th ings for the development of M adras ;and when he resigned offi ce at the age of forty -five and

wen t to Eng land , the strenuous upholder of Brit i sh honour

in the Eas t was rewarded wi th an Ir i sh peerage . Well

would i t have been for Lord Pigot i f he had sett led down

for good on h i s I r ish estate "But twelve years later heaccepted the offer of a second term of office as Governor of

Madras . I t i s not in frequent ly the case that a man w ho

has been eminen t ly successful in offi ce at one time of h iscareer fai ls badly i f after a long interval he accepts the

same offi ce again . T imes hav e altered and methods

that were successful before are now out of date . In

Lord Pigot ’s case the condi t i ons a t the t ime of hissecond appoin tment were very different from those a t the

t ime of the firs t . On the firs t occasion he had r isen to

offi ce w i th colleagues who had been h is companions in theS i’rv ice . On the second occasion he was sent out to Madras

as an elderly nobleman selected for the job , and as a stranger

CHAPTER IX

ROMAN CATHOL IC , MADRAS

When the Eng l ish first came to Madras , there werenumerous Roman Cathol ic churches in the neighbour ing

Portuguese sett l emen t of San Thome, but there were none

w i thin the trac t of land that Mr . F ranci s tDay acquired in

the Company ’s behalf . When , therefore , at the Company’s

invitat ion , a number of Portuguese from San Thome, both

pure -blooded and mixed , came and se ttled down in the

Company ’s Whi te Town , they were necessari ly compelled

to resort to the m in istrat ions of Por tuguese pr iests who

belonged to the San ThomeMi ss ion and wi thin a year of

the foundat i on of Fort S t . Georg e , the Portuguese mi ss ion

ar ies bui lt a church in the outskirt s of the Brit ish settl e

men t . This w as the Church of the A ssumption,w h ich

stands in wha t is st i l l cal led Portuguese Street’ in

George town , and i s therefore a bui lding of h i stor ic note .

To the Company ’ s representat ives the min i strat ion s of

Portuguese p r iests to res ident s of Madras were obj ec t i on

able ; for the relat ions be tween Madras and San Thome

were by no means fr iendly I t is true that when M r .

F ranc i s Day was treat ing for the acquis i t ion of a s i te,the

Por tuguese at Mylapore had furthered his efforts ; but such

a mark of apparent good wil l was no more than the outcome

of Portuguese host i l i ty to the Dutch for they hoped that

the Eng l i sh at Madras w ould be powerful al l i es wi th

themselves against the aggress ive Hollanders . A s soon ,however , as M adras had begun to be buil t and Eng l ish

trade to be act ively pushed , j ealous ies arose and dis

agre emen ts occurred and the Company’ s representat ives

ROMAN CA THOLIC ,MADRA S

chafed at the idea that Portuguese pri est s should be the

spir i tual adv isers of res iden t s of Madras .

I n 1 642 , when Madras was in it s th ird year , a certain

Father Ephraim , a F rench Capuchin , chanced to se t f oot

inMadras . Father Ephra im had been sent ou t from Pari s

as a miss i onary to Pegu ; and he had travel led across

I ndia from Surat to M asul ipatam ,where , ac cording to h i s

inst ruct i ons , he was to have secured a passage to Pegu i n

one of the Company’s sh ips . H is informat ion was out of

date ; for the Agency had lately been transferred from

Masul i patam to Madras,and the Company ’s sh ips for Pegu

were sai l ing now from Madras instead of from Masul i

patam ; so Father Ephraim journeyed southward from

Masul ipatam to look for a vessel at the new se t t l emen t .

A t Madras no vessel was star t i ng immed iately , and Father

Ephraim had to bide h i s t ime . Meanwhi l e he made him

self useful by m in istering to the Roman Cathol ics of the

place . O fficial and o ther documen ts show that FatherEphraim was a very de vout and a very abl e man . He was‘

an earne st Chr i st ian ,’ ’

a pol i shed l inguist ,’ ab l e to con

verse in Eng l i sh , Portuguese and Dutch , bes ides h is own

F rench , and he was conversan t wi th Pers ian and A rab ic .

He had the charm of attrac t i ve fri endl iness,which is so

common with F renchmen , and he capt ivated all with whom

he conversed . The Portuguese and other Roman Cathol ic

inhab i tan ts of M adras , to w hom the Company’s disapproval

of the min i strat ions of Portuguese p r iest s had been a fr equent source of trouble , formal ly p e t i t ioned Father Ephraim

to se ttle down in the C i ty ; and the Governor in Counci l ,greatly p referring a French prie st to a Portuguese andthoroughly app roving of Father Ephra im person al ly, suppor ted the peti tion w i th a formal order that

,i f the priest

would stay , a si te would be provided on which he migh t

build a church for h is flock . Father Ephraim himsel f wasnot unw i l l i ng to s tay

"

. but'

he w as under orders for Pegu ,

5 8 THE STORY OF MADRAS

and , fur thermore , Madras w as with in the diocese of SanThome, and the B ishop was not l ikely to approve of ascheme in which the m in istrat ions o f h is ow n priests wouldbe set at naugh t i n favour of a stranger . The Company ,however , was influential . A re ference was made to FatherEphrai m ’ s Capuch in super iors in Paris , and they approved

of h is remain ing in Madras ; another reference was madeto Rome , ask ing that the Brit i sh terri tory of Madras should

be eccle siasti cal ly separated from the Portuguese dioceseof Mylapore , and the Pope i s sued a decree to that effect .A s i te for a church , as also for a pr iest

’ s house, w as

provided in White Town , with in the Fort St . George of

to -day , and a smal l church , ded icated to St . Andrew , was

bui lt ; and for a good many years it was the on ly church of

any k ind in the se ttlement .

The Portuguese ecc les iast ics of Mylapore were never

reconc i led to th is ecclesias t ical separat ion of tMadras ,

and when Father Ephraim wen t by inv i tat ion to Mylapore

to di scuss certain eccles iast ical business , he was forthwi th

arrested , clapped in irons , and sh ipped off to Goa and

lodged in the prison of the Inqu is i t ion . The Governor of

Fort St . George took the mat ter in hand,but Father

Ephraim was i n pri son more than two years before h e w as

eventually re leased and sen t back to Madras .

La ter , Fa ther Ephraim rebuilt S t . Andrew’s Church on a

larg er plan , and the bu i ld ing was Opened with ceremony

and Master Patrick Warner , the Company’s Protestant

Chaplain a t F ort S t . George , complained ind ignantly to the

Direc tors in England that Governor Langhorn had cele

brated the popish occas ion with the fir ing of great guns

andi

wi th vol leys’

of smal l shot by al l the soldiers in

garrison .

’

Father Ephraim had already bui lt a church in old B lack

Town , w h ich seems to have stood somewhere within what

i s now the s i te of the H igh Court . Another F rench

ROMAN CA THOLIC , MADRA S 59

Capuchin had meanwhi le come to Madr as to help h im in hi s

ministrat ions to h is ever-increas ing flock ; so the church in

B lack Town had its regular pastor .

A fter more than fifty years of self-sacr ific ing work in

Madras, Father Ephraim died of o ld age, s incerely esteemed

by all who knew h im .

Some years after h is death St . Andr ew ’s w as aga in

rebui lt,and it was now a large ed ifice , w ith a h igh bel l

tower , and a smal l churchyard around . I n the suburban

di str ict of Muth ialpet there was also a Portuguese Bury

ing Place ,’ which is now the compound ’ of the Roman

Cathol ic Cathedral and i ts associated bui ld ing s in A rmen ian

Street ; and a small Church stood with in th is enc losure .

A djo in ing the Portuguese Bury ing Place w as the’

A r

men ian Bury ing P lace ,’ which is now the enclosure of the

A rmenian church and it was the Armen ian Bury ing Place

that gave the name to the st ree t .When Madras w as cap tured by the F rench , there were

people who sa id that the F rench pr iests in Madras had g i ven

informat ion to the i r countrymen ; and three years later ,when Madras was restored to the Company , the Governor in

Counc i l confiscated St . Andrew ’ s church . A refe rence to

the Direc tors in Eng land as to what they were to do with

the confiscated bui lding brough t back the very dec is ive

reply that they were immediately on the rece ipt of thi s,

without fai l to demol ish the Por tuguese Church in theWhite Tow n at Madras , and not suffer i t to stand . The

church was demol ished accordingly , as also a Roman

Cathol ic chapel in Vepery . The church in old B lack

Town had already been demol ished by the F rench when

they destroyed the greater part of old Black Town itsel f

and , in accordance with another edic t of the Directors in

Eng land ,by which the Company’s representat ives in Madras

were abso lutely forbid suffering any Romish Church

with in the bounds , or even to suffer the publ ic profess ion


of the Romish rel igi on , Roman Catholicism was al together

s'

couted in Madras .

Tw en ty -five years later,the Engl ish troops , after defeat

ing the F rench in var ious engag ements , captured Pondi

cherry and demol ished i ts for t ificat ions ; and the peace of

Paris le ft the F rench in I nd ia powerless . With the

danger of F rench agg ress ion removed for good , the Com

pany were less in toleran t of the rel ig ion w h ich F renchmen

professed ; and a few years later they paid th e Capuch in

pr iests some Rs . as compensat ion for the destruc

t ion of the church in Whi te Town and of the chapel in

Vepery .

Wi th funds thus in thei r hands , the Capuch in fathers

set abou t bui ld ing a new church in the Bury ing Place .’

Th is new church , wh ich they bui l t i n 1 775 , was the edifice

which i s now the Roman Cathol ic Cathedral in A rmenian

S treet . On the gate-posts appears the date 1 642 , but th is

was the year in w h ich the Company made a grant of

the land for a Roman Cathol ic Ceme tery and in which

Father Ephraim arr ived and the Madras M i s sion began , and

i s not the date of the bui ld ing of the present Church oro f i ts predecessor . The Capuch in mi ss ionar ies cont inued

in charge of Roman Cathol ic affairs in Madras unt i l 1832 ,in wh ich year they were pu t under ep iscopal j urisd ict ion.

Reference has been made in th i s Chapter and elsewhere

to the churches that were already in ex i stence in Mylapore

w hen the Eng l i sh first sett led i n Madras . A ccording to

l ocal trad i t ion , the Apost le St . Thomas made h i s way to the

East , and , after preach ing in var ious part s of I ndia , set tl ed

d ow n i n the anc ien t Hindu town of M y lapore , where h e

made numerous converts . The H indu p ri ests , indignant

a t the loss of so many Of thei r cl i ents , sought the mi ss ion

ary ’ s l i fe . The A post le , according to the tradit ion , l ived

in a small cave on a small hi l l— the L i t t le Mount — fed

b y bird s and drinking the water of a spring that bubbled up

ROMAN CA THOLIC , MADRA S 6 1

miraculous ly within the cave . Driven from the cave , he

fled to another b ill, a mi le or so away—J St . Thomas’

s

Mount -where he was k i l l ed wi th a lance . The dead body

was buried at Mylapore . Such is the story ; and in the

present -day church on the L i tt le Mount the v i s i tor is shown

a cave wh ich i s sa id to have been the A post le ' s h id ing

place ; and w i th in the nave of the cathedral at Mylapore

he is shown a hole in the g round— now lined with marble

in which the Mar tyr ’s remains are sa id to have been buri ed .

When the Portuguese came to Mylapore in the early partof the sixteenth century , they bui lt a church upon the ru insof an ancient church that had enclosed the tomb ; and the

new church became eventual ly the Cathedral of San Thome.

The s ixteenth cen tury bui ld ing w as pul led down in 1 893 ,

and the presen t Cathedral— a handsome Gothic s truc ture

was bui lt . Mylapore is now a suburb of Mad ras,and

with in Br it i sh dominion ; but the b i shopri c,wh ich was

or ig inal ly supported hyzthe King of Portugal , who had theright of nominat ing the b ishop , i s s t i l l suppor ted by the

Portuguese Governmen t .

Mylapore has a h istory of i ts ow n that i s outs ide the

scope of the Story of Madras bu t a few words about

the glories of a c i ty that i s now a suburb of Madras wi l l

not be out of p lace .

Mylapore and Madras , s tanding side by s ide , are a con

j unction of the old and the young . Mylapore , or Meliapore ,

the Peacock Ci tv of the ancien t H indu world , has ex isted

for twenty centuries , and perhaps a great many more ;Madras has ex isted less than three . I t was at Mylapore

that , according to trad i t ion , the body of the martyred

A postl e St . Thomas was buried Mylapore was the b i rth

place of Ti ruvalluvar , an old and i l lustrious Tamil author

who belonged to the down -trodden class , and of Peyalvar ,an eminent Vaishnav i te sain t and writer ; i t was here

that a company of Saivaite saints , A ppar and h is fel lows ,

62 THE STORY OF‘

MADRA S

assembled together and wrote thei r wel l-known hymn s ;and i t was here also that Mastan

, a renowned Mohammedanscholar , l i ved and w r ote and d ied .

O f the anc i ent glori es of Mylapore no vest ige remains ;but several of the churches of the Mylapore diocese belong

to the s ixteen th century , i nc lud ing the celebrated Luz’

Church , the Church of the Madre -de -Deus at San Thomeand the l i t tle Church of Our Lady of Refuge between Myla

pore and Saidapet , bes ides the churches at the L i tt l e Mount

and St . Thomas 's Mount , of which the l atter i s a s ix teenth

century development of an old chapel that ex isted there

before the coming of the Portuguese .

‘

Z I t i s of interest to note that there are those who say that

a Mylapore church gave i ts name to the c ity of Madras.

They say—m ot , I bel ieve , wi thout evidence-fl hat the rural

vi l lage of IMadraspatam , where Mr. F ranc i s Day selected

a s i te for the Company’s se ttlement , had been colon ized by

fisher folk from the parish o f the Madre-de-D eus Church

the Church of the Mother of God— and that the emigrant

fisher folk called th eir v il lage by the name of the ir par ish , and

that the name was eventually corrupted into Madras . ’ The

or igin of the name Madras i s uncertain and the explanat i on i s at any rate i nte rest i ng and not unlikely to be true .


obta ined a deed of possess i on . Seven years afterw ards ,the Raja of Chandragir i was a refugee in Mysore

,driven

from h i s throne by the Muhammadan Sultan of Golconda,

who assumed the sovere ignty of Hyderabad and the

Carna t ic . The Sultan of Golcondathus became the recogn ized overlord of Madras ; and the Company were

careful to secure from thei r new sovereign a confirmat ion

of the ir possess ion . But the power of the Sultan was

dest ined to fal l in i ts turn ; for A urangzeb , the M oghul

Emp eror at Delh i , be ing desi rous of unit ing all India under

Moghul rule , wag ed w ar agains t the Sultan of Golconda

who,as a Shiah M ohammedan , was a heret ic in

Au rangzeb’

s eyes— and defeated him . Aurangzeb put

Hyderabad under a N i zam whom he named Vi ceroy of the

Deccan ’ and the Carnat ic under .a N awab w ho was to be

subordinate to the V iceroy .‘But the Emperor who

succeeded A urangzeb had none of thei r predecessors ’

greatness ; and soon after A urangzeb’

s death the N i zam

of Hyderabad assumed independence , with the N awab of

the Carna t ic as h i s vassal .

I n 1 749 there was a quarrel for the N awabship . The

F rench at Pondicherry supported one claiman t , and the

Engl i sh at Madras supported the other“ Th is Was the

gallan t Clive ’ s opportun i ty . Exchang ing the c lerk’

s pen

for the officer ’ s sword,the youthful w r i ter marched with

a small force to A rcot and captured i t on behal f of the

Company ’ s nominee,and then susta ined most hero ically a

leng thy s i ege . Clive tr iumphed ; and Mohammed A li ,

otherw ise known as N awab Walajah , became undisputed

N awab of the Carnatic . Later,with Br i t ish support , the

N aw ab renounced his alleg iance to Hyderabad , and reigned

as an independent p rince .

I n h i s capital at A rcot, Nawab Walajah , who ha d

’

many

fact ionary enemies,would assuredly have found himself

in a dangerous cen tre of intr igue ; but he was wise in h is

CHEPA UK PALACE 65

generat ion ; for as soon as he had gained h is indepen o

‘dence he sought and obtained f rom the Governor of

Madras permiss ion to build a palace for h imsel f'

with in

the protective walls of Fort St . e

'

George. A rrangements

for the work were made ; and one of the stree ts of the

Fort— the street w hich st i l l bears the name of Palace

Street"— rece ived i ts name because i t w as the street in

wh ich the Nawab ’s res idence was to be buil t. Event

ually , however , the scheme was set as ide ; and in the

fol lowing year the N awab acquired pr ivate property in

Chepauk , and engaged an Engl i sh arch i tect to bui ld h ima house . Chepauk Palace thus came in to ex i stence . The

grounds of the Palace , which the Nawab surrounded w i th

a wall , formed an immense enclosure , wh ich inc luded a

larg e part of the g rounds o f Government House of to

day and a great deal of adj oin ing land .

Chepauk Palace was the scene of some grand doingsin i ts t ime ; and soon af ter i t was bu il t the N awab en

‘ter

tained the Governor of Madras and h is Counc i llors, one

of whom was Mr . Warren Hast ings,a t

‘an elegant

breakfast ; and , when the feast was over , he divided some

Rs . among h is guests . The Governor got Rs .

and , on a sl iding sca le , the Secretaries , who were last on

the l ist , got Rs . each .

The relations , however , between N awah Walajah and a

later Governor of Madras w ere not so cord ial . I n 1 780

Haidar A l i wi th an immense army suddenly invaded the

Carnat ic , and annih i lated a Brit i sh force that w as sen t to

oppose h im ; and Ti pu , h i s son and successor , continued

the campaign . The Company ’s treasury at Madra s w asstrai tened with the expenses of the war , and the Nawab,whose capital was in the hands of the enemy , was unable

to contribute thereto ; but when Tipu was eventua l ly

defeated, the N awab was induced to ass ign the control of

the revenues of the Carnat ic to the Company . A few

66 THE STOR Y OF MADRA S

,months la ter the Nawab fel t that he had made an unwi sebargain , and he dec lared hi s renunc iat ion of the agreement ; but Baron Macartney , the new ly appointed Gover

nor of Madras , kept h im str ictly to h is word . The Nawab

wrote various offic ial le tters , complain ing in one that LordMacartney had premed i ta tedly offered h im I nsults and

Ind ignity ,’

and in another that he had shown h im every

mar k of I nsul t and Con temp t . ’ The D i rectors in London,

expressly declar ing their des i re to conten t the i nfluenti al

N aw ab , dec ided in h is favour whereupon Lord Macartney ,who in the opin i on of hi s fr i ends had been set at naught

for the sake of the w eal thy potentate , ind ignan t l y res ignedthe Governorsh ip of °Madras , and w ent home . F r i endly

r e lat ions be tween the Naw ab and the Madras Governmen t

were thereupon re sumed , and when N awab Walajah d ied ,at the age of seven ty -e igh t , he was eulog i sed in an offic ial

note in the F or t S t . George Gazet te .

The career of h is son and successor , Umdat ~u l ~Umara ,

was l ess auspmious . A l though h i s access ion was the occa

s ion of fr i endly le tters be tw een h imsel f and the Govern

ment of Madras , the N awab’s rej ection

,of the Governor ' s

suggest ion that the financ ial arrangements between h imse lf

and the Company should be made more favourabl e to theCompany irr i ta ted the Governor , and the Governor ’s

efforts to induce the N awab to change h is mind irr i tated

the N awab . M eanwhi le T ipu Sultan was prepar ing for

anoth er war wi th the Company , and when , after a bri ef

campaign , T ipu was ki lled wh i le fighting bravely in defence

of h i s cap i ta l , i t was dec lared that an examinat ion of Tipu’s

correspondence showed tha t the N aw ab of A rco t had been

gu i lty of treasonable communicat i ons with Mysore . I t

w as according ly resolved that the Company should assume

control of the Carnat ic ; but , as the N aw ab w as seriously

i ll , nothing was done un t i l h is death , when Bri t ish troops

were sent to occupy Chepauk Palace.

CHEPA UK PALACE 67

The Nawab’s son refused to recognize the Company ’s

r ight to control hi s father’ s dom in i ons, whereupon the

Company set h im as ide , and put his cousin on the throne

in h is stead . The Company were now the actual rulers of

the Carnatic , and the future Nawabs were sty led Ti tular

Nawabs . ’ In 1855 th e third of the Ti tular N awabs d ied

without any son to succeed h im . Lord Dalhous i e w as

Governor-General of I ndia at the t ime , and it was Lord

Dalhous ie’

s declared pol icy that i f the ru l e r of any nati ve

s tate d ied wi thou t i ssue , h i s dominion s should formal ly

lapse to the Company . On this princ ipl e the Carnat ic now

became a formal part of the Bri t i sh domin ions,and the

dynasty of the N awabs came to an end ; Chepauk Palace ,which was the personal property of the Nawabs

,was ao

quired by the Company ’s Governmen t for a pr ice , and was

eventually turned into Governmen t offices.

The many thousands of Mohammedans , however , who

dw el t in the crowded st reets and lan es of Chepauk , and

who had looked upon the Nawab as the ir rel igious chief ,wou ld have been affl icted at the cessat ion of the Carnati c

l ine ; and after the Ind ian Mut iny the Government of

I ndia , respect ing Mohammedan sen t iment , recogn ized the

success ion of the nearest relat i ve o f the late N awab and

obtained for h im from the K ing of England the hered i tary

t i tle of Amir-i -A rcot , or Prince of A rcot — an honorary

t i tl e but h igher than that of N awab . A sum of Rs .

p er annum - (not an excess ive sum in relat ion to

the revenues of the Carna t ic , w h ich are now collected by

th e Madras Governmen t) — i s expended annual ly in pens ion s to the Prince and to certain of h i s relat ives ; and he

l ives in a house call ed the‘Amir Mahal ’ (the Amir

’s

Palace) , wh ich was g iven to h im by the Government .The Amir Mahal stands in spac i ous g rounds in Royape ttah .

A t the [princi pal en trance , the gate-house is a tal l and impos ing edifice in red brick . A t the gateway

,sentries

,


armed with o ld-fashioned r ifles , stand— or sometimes si t

On guard ; and the Pr ince’ s Band is often to be heard

practi s ing or i en tal mus ic in the room up above .

Reg arded in relat ion to its history , Chepauk is someth ing

more than one of the Government bui ld ings on the

Mar ina ." Let us remember that,when it was enclosed

wi thin the Walls that are now no more , i t was the home ofMohammedan potentates— somet imes a scene of gorgeous

festi vity— somet imes a scene of desperate in tr igue . I n

imaginati on we may peop l e the fron t garden wi th the gai ly

un i formed B ody -Guard of the Carna t ic sovereign , mounted

on gai ly -bridled steeds ; and w e may see th e N awab h i rm

sel f coming magnificently dow n the front steps and cl imb

ing in to the s i lver how dah that is strapped on the back of

a kneel ing elephan t . A blast of ori en tal music,and the

process ion goes on it s way ; and we may wonder at wh ich

of the t i led window s on the upper floor the bright eyes of

the La l la Rookhs and the Nurmahals of Chepauk are

5 1i peeping at the spec tacle .-

The vis ion vani shes . The

processi on now is a process ion of cl erks to thei r homes

When thei r day ’s work i s oVer ; and the mus i c i s a ragtime

se lec ti on by the Band of the Madras Guards on the M arina ,close by , w i th ayahs and ch ildren around . We ar e in the

twent ie th cen tury ; but for a moment we have l i ve d in

the DaSt .

CHAPTER X I

GOVERNMENT HOUSE

In the early day s of Madras all the employees of the

Company, from the Governor down to the most‘

jun i or

ap pr entice , l i ved in common . The ir bedrooms were in

one and the same house , and th ey had their meals at one

and the same table . The house stood in the middle of the

F ort , and was the Factory -a w ord which , as already

explained , was used in former t imes to mean a mercan t i le

office,or

,as A nnandale in h is d ict ionary defines i t ,

‘

an

estab l ishment where fac tors in fore ign countr ies res ide to

transact bus iness for the i r employers ;’ and the Factory

in F ort St . George was both an office and a home .

The communi ty l i fe , with the common table ; was main

tained for many years , but in course of t ime , when the

number of the employees had g reat ly increased and some

of the senior offic i als had wives and ch ildren , one man and

another were al lowed to l i ve in separate quarters , wi th inthe prec incts of the Fort ; and even tually the common

table , l ike King A rthur’s , was d issolved . Even “ then ,

however , and right on un t i l the beg inn ing of the n ineteenth cen tury , the j un ior employee s had a common mess ,and w ere under someth ing l ike d isc ipl ined control .L ike al l the other bui ld ings inside the F ort and -with in

the wal ls of Whi te Town , the Factory - which was - some

t imes spoken of as The Governor ’s House ’ —was wi thou t

a garden ; and i t was on ly to be expected that the res ident

employees , most of whom were young men , should wish

for a recreation ground to wh ich they cou ld resort in the ir

leisure h ours . Some of the weal thy pri vate res idents of

Whi te Town had shown what cou ld be done ; for they had


acqu i red patches o f land outside the walls, which they had

enclosed with hedges and cu l t i vated as gardens , with a

house in the middle of each garden , in wh ich , as e ither a

permanent or an occasional res idence , the owner and h is

fami ly might hope to find rel i e f from the stuffiness of the

streets of the rapidly developing c i ty . In the Records

any such vi l la i s spoken of as a garden -house an d even

now in Madras the term‘garden -house

’

i s occas ionallyused in Indo -Engl ish as s igni fy ing a house that s tands

wi thin i ts own compound,

’ as d ist i nc t from houses that

open d irectly i n to the street .The Company ’ s agents in Madras real ized the des i rabil ity

of lay ing ou t a garden for the recreat ive benefit of the

Company's employees . Outs ide the walls , therefore , of

Whi te Town they hedged off some e igh t acres of land inthe l ocal i ty in which the Law College now stands, and theyculti vated i t as a Company’s Garden ; and within i t theybui l t a small pavi l ion . We may imag ine that in the cool

of the even ing i t was common for a goodly number of theCompany

’s mercanti l e emp loyees to leave their apartments

in the Fort and strol l beyond the wal ls the short distance to

the‘

Garden ,’

which in those early days w as refreshing ly near the seashore . I n our m ind ’s eye we can blot

the Law Col l ege out of the landscape and can see a

party of youthful merchants engaged as energet ically as

was suitable to the heat of Madras in the then fashionable

game of bowls— or , less energeti cal ly but much more exc i

tedly , gathered in a r ing round two cocks that are tear ing

each other to p ieces— a p art icularly popular form of

Sport ’ in old Madras ; and , although the D irectors in

London appropr ia tely forbade to the ir employees the use

of cards or the d ice-box , we can espy a tense -vi saged

quar te t with in the shadow of the pavi l ion with a pool of

fanams (co ins worth about 2M.) on the table , or

p ossibly , rupees er pagodas , abs orbed in a round of ombre


put the work in hand w as met by the D irectors in London

wi th the typical ly frugal rep ly that the work might be done

but care w as to be taken that the Company should be put

to no g reat char g e .’ Poss i bly the representat i ves in

Madras were able to provide add it ional supplies on the spot ,bu t, however that may have been , the house was hand

somely bui lt ,’ yet w i th l itt le expense to the Company .

’

The new garden seems to have compr i sed th e area wi th

in which the Medical College and the General Hospi tal ar e

now s i tuated . The g rounds , which stre tched down , even

as now , to the bank of the r iver , were well laid out , and

the Company ’s first Garden House was a fine possess ion .

In 1686 Master Wi l l iam Gyfford , Governor of F ort S t .

George , had a fancy for us ing the Garden House as a

pr ivate res idence for h imself . I t i s not to be wondered a t

tha t he did so ; for Mas ter Gyfford , after twenty -seven years ’

res idence 1n Madras and more than twenty seven years in

the East , was in poor heal th , and lately he had been takeni ll with a a vi olent fitt of the Stone and Wind Coll ick .

’

The gardenless Factory in the For t was a g loomy

apology for a Governor’ s H ouse ,’ and the crowd of

employees that were accommodated there must have been

a

“

serious infl ict ion upon the inval id Governor ; and he

found the Garden House an ag reeab l e retreat . In h i s new

quarters he got be tter of h i s i l lness and he dwelt.

there a

cons iderabl e t ime , t i l l inthe fol lowing year he left .Madras

for Eng land for good . The story i s interest ing , for i t

records the first occasion on wh ich a Governor of Madras

lived in a separate house outs ide the Fort .

On various occas ions the Company’

s Garden House,

’

wi th i ts extens ive grounds , w as used for public purposes,

just i fy ing the plea for i t s construct ion . For example,

w hen the Company r eceived the news of the access ion of

King James I I , the even t was celebrated wi th bri l l ian t

p roceedings at the Garden House . Simi larly , at, the

GOVERNMENT HOUSE 73“"I

access ion of Queen Anne all European s of fash ion in the

C i ty ’ were inv i ted to the Garden House , where they‘

drank the Queen’s Health , and Prosperity to old

England .’ In an earl i er chap ter we have re lated h ow a ,

young N awab of A rcot who had j ust succeeded ,to hi s

murdered father’s throne was en tertained at the Garden

House wi th great doings . Governor Pitt made great

d e velopments i n the Gardens , and was another Governor

who l iked the Garden House as a res idence . A n Engl ish

man who was l iv ing in Madras in 1 704 , when Pi tt w as

Governor , has l e ft an in teresting account of the Garden

Hous e as he saw i t

The Governor , during the h o tWinds , retires to th e Company'

s

new Garden for refreshment , w hich he has made a very del ightfu l Place of a bar ren one . I ts costly Gates ,

lovely Bow l ingGreen . spac ious Walks . Teal -pond , and Curiosities preserved in

several D ivis ions are w orthy to be Admired . Lemons and Grapesgrow there , b u t five Shi l l ings w or th ofWater and attendance w i l lscarcely mature one of them .

’

Before long i t had come to be an unwri t ten regulat ion

that Governors at Fort S t . Georg e migh t reside at the ir

choice e i ther i n the F ort or at the Garden House . There

came a t ime , how ever , when the Governor had of necess i ty

to betake h imsel f to the F or t ; i t w as the t ime when the

F rench were bes i eg ing M adras . During the s iege the

enemy used the Garden House as a vantag e -ground for their

b ig guns and afterw ards , w hen they had cap tured F ort St .George and were in occupa t ion of the c i ty , they pul led the

Garden House down , l es t the Eng l i sh , try ing perhaps to

recap ture the F ort , should be ab l e to use i t as a vantage s

g round in the ir turn .

Thus , when Madras was restored to the Engl ish , the

Garden House had di sappeared , and the only house for

Governor Saunders was the original res idence i n the

middle of the Fort . Governor Saunders , however , w as

not content with the wal led-in accommodation that th e

74”

THE STORY OF MADRA S

For t prov1ded and was unw i l l ing to forgo the re s i dent ial

pri vi leg es that h is predecessors had enjoyed ; so a private

garden-house in C hepauk w as ren ted in h is behalf . I t

be longed to a M r s . Madei ros , a r ich Portuguese widow ,

w hose husband , lately deceased , had been a leading

merchan t i n Whi te Tow n .

Mr s . Made iros’

s house was‘

Government House , Madras ,’

of the presen t day . The house , however , has been enlarged

GOVERNMENT HOUSE , MADRA S

and the grounds have been extended since Governor Saun

ders l i ved there as a tenan t .

Governor Saunders l iked h is res idence,and , before he

had been there a year,the Company acquired i t from the

w idow , who had no use fo r i t now that her husband was

dead ; and the Governor was careful to leave on record

the reason of the acqui sit ion

It having been a lw ays usual for the Company to al low the

Pres ident a house i n the Country to retire to ,and M rs . Medeiros

be ing w i l l ing to d ispose of her House . s ituated in the Road to

St . Thomé , for three thousand five hundred pagodas .(say

R s Agreed That i t be purchased accor ding ly ,The

GOVERNMENT HOUSE"

company’s Garden-house havi ng been demoli sh ' d by theF r ench

w hen they w ere in Possession of th is P lace . and M rs . M ede i ros'

s

be ing convenient for that Purpose , and on a Survey esteem'd

worth much more than the Sum ’

t is ofler’

d at . ’

The Company always enjoy ed a good bargain , and

Governor Saunders was just ified in th ink ing that he had

made a very good one in respect of the house ; for , a few

years later,the house , with certa in extensions and improve

men ts,was wr itten down in the Company ’s books a t a

valuation of nearly four t imes the pr ice that w as paid

for it .

We have brough t our story dow n to the acquis i t i on o f

Government House,but i t remains to relate some of the

historic events i n which Government House has fig ured

s ince i t was acquired .

During the second s iege of Madras by the F rench , under

Lal ly , the besiegers occup ied the Garden House , and

during the ir occupat ion they d id a great deal of wan ton

damage before they ceased their vain endeavours. Two

years later,however

,the Eng l i sh had the enj oyment of a

delicate revenge. They captured Pondicherry and broug h t

Lally to Madras , where they imp r isoned him in the Garden

House t i l l a vesse l was avai lab le to take h im to England .

The damage tha t he had done had no t ye t been repa ired

and a contemporary Record says that M r . Lally was lodged

in those apartmen ts of the Garden House wh ich had

escaped his fury at the Sieg e of Madras ,’ and that i n t e

spect of h i s table he was allowed to give hi s own orders‘without l im i tat ion of expence,

’ with the result tha t he

seemed to have intended Revenge by Profus ion .

’

A few years later T ipu , Sultan of Mysore , at the head of

a body of horsemen , made a sudden raid on Madras ; and

the troopers scampered abou t the wel l - laid -out g rounds of

the Garden House , loot ing the v il lages on ei ther s ide.

A ccording to accounts , Governor Bour chier and h i s


Counc i l lors were there when the raiders came, and t hey

would assured ly have been caught had they not managed to

make thei r e scape i n a boat that was conveniently t ied upon the bank of the Cooum r iver .

More than one Governor of Fort St . George has d ied at

Government House , and it was there that Governor P igo t

died i n . extraord inary c ircumstances . The tal e has been

told in a previous chapter , that Lord Pigot w as

‘

ar rested by

h is Council lors,wi th whom he had quarrel led , and that he

d i ed i n confinement in the Garden House .

The reader has yet to be told how the Garden House

was final ly transformed into - the Governmen t House tha t

w e see to-day .

In 1798 Lord Cli ve , son of the g reat Robert C l ive , was

sent out to I nd ia as Governor of Madras . With in the first

s i x month s of h is arrival there was the exc i tement of a

war with Mysore , in which the terr ible T i pu Sultan w as

k i l led dur ing the assau lt on h is cap i tal . During the tran

qui l remainder of his five years 1n India , Lord Cliveturn ed

h is atten t i on to domest ic reforms , and amongst them he

resolved that the Garden House should be improved . Inan offi cial m inute he wrote

“The garden house . at prese s t occup ied by Mysel f , i s so

insu ffi c ien t e ither for th e pr ivate accommodation of my fam i l yand Staff , or for

‘

the conven ience of the publ ic occas ions inseparab le from my s i tuation , that it i s my intention to make such an

addi tion to it as may be calcu lated to answ er both purp‘

oses .

’

Lord C live thereupon , in 180 1 , developed Government

House at a cost o f more than Rs . 3 lakh s ; and two years

later he bu i l t the beau t i ful Banquet ing Hall , at a cost of

Rs . 23} lakhs . The recen t fal l of Tipu ’ s capital of Ser inga

patam was an event that the Banquet ing Hal l c ould

appropr iately commemorate ; and Lord Cl ive , with p iousr espec t for h is dead father ’s memory , coupled P lasseywith Seringapatam , and ordered that the fine s figure-work

GOVERNMEN T HOUSE 77

on the facade of the hall should be a commemoration of

bo th victori es . I n Eng land the Directors o f the Compan y

complained of what they called‘

such wasteful ex tra

vagance but the developments were a real want , and i t

is a matter of present -day sat isfact ion that the Madras

Government have no need to be acquiring a site now and

to be bui ld ing a new Governmen t House in these expens ive

days . Lord Cl ive was certainly no mi ser wi th the Com

pany’ s money , for he bu i l t also a second Gove rnmen t

House— a coun try residence at Guindy . The coun try

res idence was developed and improved some forty yearslater by Lord E lphinstone , who was Governor —of Madras

in the middle of last cen tury . I t i s a truly beauti ful house ,

stand ing in beaut ifu l g rounds and i t has la tely been a pro

posi t ion that the house at Guindy should be the Governor’s

only res idence , and that Governmen t House , Madras , should

be used for Government offices .‘

Government House , Madras"’ To most people i t i ssugg est ive of dinner part i es with in and garden part ies

wi thout ; and the Banque t ing Hall is suggest ive of dances

and levees and meetings for good causes . Bu t to peoplew ho can look at Government House

,Madras

,with an

his tor ic glance it rouses other memories . With in i ts

or ig inal walls more than tw o cen turies ago a belace’

d

Senhor kept Portuguese stat e . I t was here that'

F rench

men were encamped while the ir guns were fru itlessly

hammering at the wall s of Fort S t, George. I t w as here

tha t Lally l i ved sumptuously in pr ison,t i l l he was sen t to

Eu ropef— eventual ly to be execu ted in Par is for having

fai led to capture Madras . I t was w ith in these grounds

that Ti pu’s horsemen were scampering about

“

on a Septem

ber morning ,~look ing for houses where money

“or jewe ls

could be commandeered . I t was here that an ennobled

Governor of Madras lived in gi lded capti vity t i l l death set

CHAPTER X I I

MADRAS AND THE SEA

Madras i s now a seaport of considerable repute ; but

i t i s in tere st i ng to recall the fact that less than forty years

ago the c i ty was wi thout a harbour , and that sh i ps which

came there had to anchor out at sea. I n the days of the

Company , passengers and cargo had to he landed on the

beach in boats ; and , as the waves that chase one anoth er

to the shores of Madras are nearly alw ays g iant bi llows

cres ted w i th foam ing surf,the passage be tw een sh ip and

shore was not wi thou t i ts d iscomfort s and also i ts r isks .

Warren H ast ings , when he was sen ior member of the

Madras Counci l and was in charg e of Publ ic Works , wrote

it dow n that he though t i t poss ible to carry out a causeway

or p rer ,1nto the sea beyond t he Surf , towhich boats migh t

come and land the ir good s or passengers , wi thout being

exposed to the Surf . ’ A t various t imes d iffe ren t engineers

dev i sed plans for such a pier as Warren Hast ings propos

ed , but noth ing was ac tual ly‘done

,and i t was not un t i l the

s ixt ies of last century that a pier w as actual ly made . I t

was not a s tone causeway such as Hast ings seems to have

had in h is mind,bu t w as a l ighter and l ikel i er structure of

Wood and i ron ; and i t d id excel lent work , mak ing i t easy

for passengers and cargo to he landed in fai r weather .

M adras was s t i l l,however

,wi thout a harbour but before

many years a harbour was taken 1 1] hand , and in the

summer of 188 1 i t s two arms,enclos ing the smal l p ier ,

were prac t i cal ly fin i shed . There was much rej oic ing butthe congr atu lat ions w ere short-l i ved , for on a certain nightdur ing t heWi n ter. of the same year there was s a cyclone off

Madras , and the nex t morn ing the c i t izens saw that t heir

'


I n ear l i er days Madras was ver i ly a c ity o f the sea.

B oth Whi te Town and B lack Town lay d irectly along thesea-beach , and the coming and going of the Company ’s

'

ships were momentous even ts . Surf-boats used to land on

the beach outs ide the‘Sea-Gate ’ of the wave-splashed

Fdrt , laden with cargo from the Company’s sh ips ly ing

out in the road s ; and the bales were carr ied through the

THESEAGATE.

sea. ha s now r eceded. afa r

ga teway in to the Company ’s warehouses with in the F ort

walls . The Sea-Gate i s st i l l to be seen , and i t sti l l looks

towards the sea but the sea i s far away , and the Sea-Gate

i s now one of the least used of the entrances to the F ort .

I n former t imes the Company had a cons iderable fleet of

fir st -c lass sail ing-ships , and , owing to the frequency o f wars

with ei ther the F rench or the Dutch , the Company

MADRA S‘

AND THE SEA 8 1

obtained royal permission to equip the ir sh ips as men -of

war armed wi th serv iceable guns , which could be turned

agains t an enemy if occas ion requ i red . The voyag e from

England to I n dia was by way of the Cap e of Good Hope ,and it las ted at least three or four months , and often verymuch more . For e xamp le , when Robert Cl ive came ou t

to I ndia for the first t ime , the vessel was so bu ffeted by

contrary winds that the commander though t i t best to r un

across the A tlantic and let her l i e up so long in a South

American port that Cl ive learned to speak Span ish w i th

cons iderab le fluency ; and i t was not t i l l nearly a year after

leaving Eng land that the young writer arrived a t Madras .F urthermore , bes ides the various adven tures that were

natural to a sea-voyage , there w as the con t ing ency of a seafight , and the poss ib i l i ty of be ing taken to Pondicherry o r

B atavia as a p r i soner of w ar i nstead of being landed a tM adras as a paid employee of the Honourabl e Company .

’

I t was usual for several sh ips to sa i l tog ether , for mutual

protect ion and passeng ers had reason to cong ratulatethemselves when they were even tual ly landed safe andsound at Madras . I t can be readi ly imag ined that the

s ight of a vessel of the Company approaching in the d is

tance caused a st i r of exc i tement among st the residents ofF ort S t . Georg e . There were no teleg raphs from otherports to g ive p rev ious notice of a vesse l

’s

prospect ive arr ival ; and the fac t that

a ship was at hand was unknown unt i l

her flag 1 or her par ticular r ig was

d i scerned in the d i s tance , or unti l one

of her g uns gave notice o f her

ap p roach . The comparat ive regular ity ,however , of the winds in Eastern seas “if compan i on u se.

C0

caused seasons m wh ich vessels m ight be expected and1 The flag disp layed by the Company

’

s sh ips bore seven horizontal r ed stripes on a w h ite ground ,

W ith a St . George’

s Cross in thei nner t0 p corner . ’ —Love .

6


when a season arrived , the look -out who happend to be on

duty on the Fort flags taff must have been par t i cularly alert .A y , and there must have been much hurry ing to and fro

in the stree ts of Whi te Tow n when the s ignal had been

g iven and the news had spread that the sai ls of a Company’ s

sh ip had been s igh ted , and whi le the vessel , p erhap s with

several consorts , came nearer and nearer , t il l at last the

anchors were dropped and salutes were exchanged betwe enship and shore .

There was good cause for exc i tement . The sh ip brough t

le tters from home— perhaps after several months of n o

news at all . There w ere th e p rivate letter s that told the

news about near ones and dear ones ; there were the

offi cial letters that decreed appointments i n the Company ’ s"

service and promot ions and p enalties , and dealt wi th the

Company’s business and there were the news -letters

the old-fashioned predecessors of the modern newspaper ,which were writ ten by paid correspondents , whose duty i t

was to g ive thei r cl i en ts new s of London and of Eng l and

and of Europe . The news w as often astound ing , and

was some t imes ex traord inar i ly behind - t ime . F or example ,the Company ’s employees i n I nd ia were st i l l p rofess ing

loyal ty to the Most H igh and M ighty K ing James I I nearly

a twelvemonth after that monarch had fled to F rance and

had been succeeded by Will iam and Mary ; and the

employees at Madras were surprised indeed when a sh ip

arr ived one day from Eng land with the belated news .

The salutes have been fired,and the vesse l has been

surrounded by a flot i l la of surf-boats and catamaran s .

The commander and th e passengers are being rowed ashore ,and the Governor with h is Counci l lors , dressed all of them

in t he ir smartest offi c ial att i re , are w ait ing on the beach out

s ide the Sea-Gate of the F ort to bid them a hearty welcome .

Amongst the passengers there are probably some youths

who have been posted to Madras e ither as apprenticed

ZMADRA S AND THE SEA 83

‘

w r i ters .

’ or as mi l i tary Cadet s ; and perhaps there is

a sen i or employee who is returning to India after the rare

event o f a hol iday in England . Poss ibly too there are

some ladies , ei ther wives of employees who have been

w il l ing to accompany or to fol low their husbands to the

mysterious Eas t— or , as was not infrequentl y th e case2

SUR F -BOAT

young lad ies who , w i th the consent of the D irectors , have

b een'

ship ped out to India by thei r paren ts or guardian s or"

on 3the ir own account,in the hope that companionab l e

‘ ~

bachelor emp loyees , pining in thei r lonel iness , wil l jump at7

the chance of matr imony .

The surf-boat comes nearer and nearer ; and when i t

gets“am ong the breakers there are femin ine screams oft error . The alarm i s not wi thout cause for at one momen tt he' boat is be ing balanced on the top of a heaving wave ,and the next i t i s almost lost to s ight in a foaming hollow .


The exc itement i n the tossing boat i s tremendous ; but it i sbr ief for there are only three or four breakers to be

negot iated , and in less than a minute a curl ing wave has;

caugh t the boat i n i ts clutch and hurls i t with a thud into

t he shal lows . Naked cool ies rush forward and lay hold o f

i ts s i des,l e s t the backwash should carry i t seaward again ;

and ,wi th the he lp of the nex t wave , they manag e to haul

the boat a l i tt le further on shore , and the passengers are

ab le to d i sembark— spla shed , perhaps , but safe and

When the gree ti ng s are over , the Governor leads the wayin to the Fort , where a general meal i s served and the news

‘

i s told and the exc lamat ions of surpr ise are many . I n the

evening there i s a banquet , and after the banquet , whenthe gen t lemen have fini shed their wine ,

’ and have rej oined

the lad ies , the stately dances of the period are‘performed

and it i s no t unl ikely that before the assembl y breaks up,

s ome , i f not all , of the newly-arrived young ladies haverece ived and have acce pted offers of matr imony ; and i t i s

possible that two or more gallan t s have had a ser iousquarre l abou t this young lady or that , and even p ossib le .

that,out of the Gov ernor

’

s s igh t , swords have been drawn

in her regard .

On the morrow the unloading beg in s and for many day sa fleet of surf -boat s i s bus i ly engag ed in bringing ashorethe broadcloths and other Eng l i sh ware s wh i ch the Com ~

pany wil l be ab le to sel l at a larg e p rofit— not forgett ing the .

barrel s of canary and made ira and other luxuries that have

been imported both for p r ivate consump t ion and also for the

general table in the F ort . A nd when the unload ing I S over

and the ship has been overhauled after her long voyag e ,th e surf-boats wil l then be engaged in carry ing to the shi p

the cal icoes and other Indian wares that are to be exported

to Eng land for the Company’

s profit there .

The sea-trade of Madras i s very much greater now than

i t w as in the days of old . Not a day now passes but at .

MADRA S AND THE SEA 85

l east one steamship glides into the Madras Harbour , and i t

i s always a much larger vessel than w as the very largest o f

t he sa i l ing-sh ips that in those bygone t imes tacked

laborious ly to an anchorage in the Madras roads . But the

exci tement has disappeared . The - steamers come and g o

w i th as l i tt le st i r— or not so much— as when a tramcarl eaves a crowded street -corner .

I n Madras ’ there are sti l l some reminders of the t imes

when nautical affa i rs were in more g eneral ev idence inMadras than they are now . For examp le , the N aval

Hospital Road i s st i l l the name of a thoroughfare w h ich

l eads from the Poonamallee Road,oppos i te the School of

Arts, to Vepery , and it i s a reminder of the fact that there

were once upon a t ime suffic ient naval men in Madras t o

m ake a hospi tal for s i ck seamen a necess i ty . The bui ld ing s

o f the old Naval Hospi tal st i l l ex i s t ; they are the bu i ld ingsi n the Poonamallee Road oppos ite the School of A rts . I n

th e early part of last cen tury the N aval Hospital i tsel f was

abol i shed , and the bu i ld ing s were converted into a Gun

C arriage Fac tory — and th i s i s now no more . I t i s a goodmany years indeed s ince the Gun Carriag e F actory w as

c losed down and in Madras a t th is part icular t ime , when

t here 18 a very p ress ing demand for house accommodat ion ,many people wonder that such spac ious premises in so busya quarter of the ci ty should have been ly ing idle for so longand are hop i ng to see them once more serv ing some usefu l

p urpose .

1 A nother reminder of the naut i cal condi t ions of those day s

i s to be found in the ex istence of an A dmi ralty House .

’

"A dmi ralty House i s a fine residence in San Thome, and

i s n ow the property of the Raj a of V i z ianag ram . I t was

a pparen t ly the San Thome res idence of the Admiral of the

East I nd ian flee t . That official had another residence

w ith in the For t , which used also to be called Admiralty

House - the house which Robert Cl ive occupied at the

86 THE STORY ‘OF MADRA S

t ime of h is marr iage , and wh ich i s now the A ccountant

Genera l ’s offi ce .

We will g lance at one more reminder o f the naut icalMadras of by -gon 3 t imes . A t Royapuram there i s a largehouse wh ich is now s ty led B iden House ,

’ and i s usedasa harbour-masters ’ r es idence , bu t which unt i l a few years

ago was called‘

The Biden Home ’ or‘The S ailors

’

Home .’

I t is not an anc ien t build ing , but i t was nevertheless buil t in th e days o f the sai l ing -sh ip ,

and i 3 33 .

reminder of the t imes when sai l ing-sh ips used to l i e out

i n the Madras Roads and the‘

Sai lors ’ H ome ’ offered

seamen en ter tainmen t more physically and moral ly whole"some than that which was prov ided in the low-class hotels»

and saloons which laid themselves ou t for the spol iat ion ,of

J ack ashore — and of the t ime when the wreck of a sa i l ing . .

ship on the Coromandel coas t was not an uncommone

occurrence and partie s o f di st ressed seamen were not

i nfrequen t ly to be seen in Madras , for w hom a temporaryHome

’

had to be provided . The Old ‘ Salt — the

pic turesque sea-dog of sai l ing -ship days — has d isappearedexcept from s tory -books— the old - fash ioned seaman w i th ,

earring s in h is ears and a v i l lainous qu id in h i s mouth ,.dressed in a blue j ersey and the bagg ie st of b lue trowsers ,and lurch ing as he walked , always ful l of strange oathsand larding h is speech wi th nau t ical j argon . On shore,after a long sea -voyag e , and with money ,

in hi s pockets

the Old Sal t ’ in an Eas tern port was not always a factor

for p eace and progress . He was “not uncommonly too

frequen t a v i s itor at what the Madras Records cal l “the;

p uz

nch houses ,’ and the Records show that he often caused

‘

a di sturbance . Bu t he was a brave fel low , and at sea he;

d id much for Eng land’s trade and for England ’ s g reatness .

I n an Indian seaport he was a picturesque , i f troublesome,

p ersonage , and nautical Madras has changed with the O ld"Sal t

’s disappearance .


smal l educat ional enterp ri se s in the days w hen Madras was

y oung .

The in i t ial enterpr i se was smal l indeed . The firs t schoo l

i n Madras w as the l i ttle publ i c school for children ,s everal of w hom are Eng l i sh which the F rench Capuchin

pr i est , Father Ephraim , Op ened in h i s ow n house in Whi teTown very soon after Madras came into be ing . H is pupi l s

were most ly Portuguese or Portuguese Euras ians , the

chi ldren of Portuguese subj ects w ho had come from M yla

p ore and w ho , for purposes of trade or commerce , had

set tled down wi th in the Eng l i sh Company’s domain . H i s

Eng l i sh pupils must have been ch i ldren of the very few of

the Company’

s c iv i l or mi l i tary employees that were marr i ed,

or of the st i l l fewer Engl ish free set tlers . Father Ephraim ,

who according to accoun ts was a real ly learned man,

charged no fees , yet was deep ly in terested in the welfare of

his scholars ; and the l ittle school must have supp l i ed a

g reat wan t in those far -off days . I t i s i n terest i ng i ndeed

to think of that l it tl e public school for the room in the

p r i est’s house w as the scene of the very first beg inn ing of

what are now the mighty educat ional act iv i t i es of Madras

an earnest, m oreover , of the g reat th ing s that the

”

Roman

Cathol ic Church was going to do in the w ay'

of education,bo th for boy s and for g irl s , in South India .

F ather Ephraim ’s school con t inued to prosper under h is

successors , and in the seventeenth century i t was transferred ,as a poor - school , to a bui ld ing in the grounds of wha t i s now

the Roman Cathol ic Cathedral in A rmenian Street ; and in

1 875 i t was pu t under the con trol of the brothers of St .

Patr ick,an I rish order o f educat ional monks , and it became

St . Patrick ’s orphanage . Later the brothers transferred

themselves and their orphanage to the spac ious parkE lph instone Park— ou the southern bank of the A dyar

R iver , the p remises wh ich they occupy st i l l .For , some thirty years the Company took no part in

THE STORY OF THE SCHOOLS 89

educat ional work , and the ch i ldren of Madras were l eft

ent irely to Father Ephra im’ s care . Then for tw o years

a certa in M as ter Patrick Warner was the Company’

s

t emporary chaplain of Madras—

a consci ent ious and un

c omprom i sing Protestan t m in i ster w ho wrote some long

l e tters to the D irectors in Eng land denounc ing the lax ity of

the conduc t of the Company’ s employees and deploring the

i nfluence that Roman Cathol ic p r iests had been al lowed

to obtain in Fort S t . George . F inal ly , he wen t back to

England , with the threat that he was gomg to interv iew

the D irectors on var ious matter s p ertain ing to Madras ; and

that he succeeded in making h imself heard i s to be seen i n

the fac t that in the fol low ing year the D irectors sen t a

Protestan t schoolmaster ou t to M adras . The letter in

which they notified the appo in tmen t to the Governor in

C ounci l a t Fort S t . George was assuredly insp i red by

Master Patrick Warner ’ s undoubtedly h igh -minded r e

p resentat ions . They wrote that , as there w ere now in F or t

S t . George so many marr ied fam i l ies ,’ they w ere sending

o u t‘

one M r . Ralph Orde to be schoolmaster at the Fort

w ho i s to teach al l the Chi ldren ‘to read Eng l ish and to

w r ite and Cypher g rat i s , and i f any of the other N at ives ,as Portuguez , Gentues (Telugus) ,

l or others wi l l send the i r

Ch i ldren to School , we requ ire they be also taught grat i s

and he i s l ikewise to instruc t them in the Principles of

the Protestan t rel ig ion .

’ M r . Ralph Orde arr i ved by the

s ame ship which brought the le tter , and h is arr ival ( 1677) i s

a nother notable even t in the h istory of“educat ion in Madras .

I t was the first beginn ing of Governmen t educat ion— the

l ay ing of the first stone i n what i s now such a vast edifice.O

In appointing a schoolmaster , the D irectors meant to dot heir bes t for educat ion in the i r r is ing city ; for they had

1 In modern Madras the great major i ty o f the H indu res idents ar e

Tam i ls bu t in the beg inning there w er e very few Tam i l immigrants ,a nd the H indu r esidents w ere nearly al l of them Tel ugus (Gentoos) .


engaged no mean domin ie on a menial ’s pay . I n choos ing

M r . Ralph Orde they chose a good man,and they paid h im

acco rd ingly . He was to d ine at the General Tab le , and

h is“

salary was to be [ 5 0 a year , w hich in those days w asno smal l sum— more than the salary of some of the Members

of Counci l . Perhaps , indeed , they got too good a man for .

the post for after five years of educat ional work in Madras ,M r . Orde complained that h i s schoolmastering had been

much prejud icial to my heal th ,’ and he asked to be rel ie ~

ved of h i s dut ie s and to be appoin ted to a post in the Corn

pany’

s civi l serv ice instead . H is request was g ran ted .

A new schoolmaster w as appo in ted ; and as a C iv i l ian"

M r . Orde w orked w i th such success that in two or three

years he was sent to Sumatra to be the Ch ief of a factory

that he w as to found on the west coast of the island . The

ex-sch oolmaster would, p erhaps , have risen to be Governor

of Madras,but i t would seem that l i fe in the East had

real ly been much prejudic ial to h i s health ,’

for he died

in Sumatra ten years after h is first arr ival in Madras.

I n 1 688 , by v i rtue of the Company’

s Royal Char ter , a

Corp orat ion of the C i ty of Madras came into be ing , and i t

was among their delegated dut i es that they should bui ld a

schoo l in B lack Town for the purpose of teaching N at i ve

ch ildren to speak,read

,and w r i te the English Tongue ,

and to understand A r i thmet i c and M erchan ts’

A ccomp ts .

’

Three years later , however , E l ihu Yale , Governor of

M adras,comp la ined to the Corporat ion that , although they

had been empow ered to levy taxes on the c i t izens , they

had not so much as though t about bui ld ing a school , and

had neg lected var ious other c iv i c respons ibi l i t i es .The

Company— rightly or w rong ly— sough t to j ust i fy their inac

~

t ion with the excuse which the Corporat ion of Madras has

r ightly or wrong ly— made for c iv ic inact ion . so many t imes

s ince,namely that no funds had been assigned to them .

by Governmen t for the works that they were called upopf


fi rst beg inning of the educat ional work that Eng l ish Protes

an t m i ss ionary soc ie t i es have done in I ndia . The Socie ty

found themselves unab le to take up the work immediately

themselves ; so they appl i ed to the v igorous Danish Luth

eran M i ss ion at Tranquebar , w hich w as then a Danish

settlemen t ; and a Danish m in iste r w as sent to Madras to

set th ings going .

I n the course of t ime Madras had become a much more

h abi tab l e c i ty than i t had been in i ts first beg inn ings , and

a much more po ss ible p lace of res idence for European

women . The Company ’ s employees , therefore , were more

and more d isposed to matr imony ; and , as already related ,the D irectors

,bel i ev ing that married men made steadier

e mployees , had from early t imes encourag ed the nuptial

h umour by send ing out from Eng land p eriodical ba tches of

w el l -connected young women as p rospect ive br ides for

e mployees w ho lacked ei ther the means or the incl inat ion

t o take a trip home to choose partners for themselves .The number of European fathers and mothers , th erefore , in

M adras was continually increas ing ; and for the educat iono f the i r ch i ldren

,as also for that of ch ildren of wel l -to-do

Euras ians , there was need of a d ifferent kind of education

than the var ious f ree -schools supp l i ed . Home education ,

w i th or w i thout paid tutors and governesses , p robably served

i ts turn w i th some , but it was certain that sooner or late r

t he private school w ould come into being .

\Ve are unab le to say w hen the first pr ivate school in

Madras was s tarted ; bu t an adverti semen t in one of the

i ssues of the Mad r a s Cou r ier , in 1790, show s that a private

s chool for boys was started in that year and i t w as probably

t he first . The en terp r i s ing educat ioni st w as M r . J ohn

Holmes,M .A .

,w ho opened the Madras A cademy in B lack

‘

Town for the instruction of boys in Reading,Writing ,

A r ithmet ic , H istory , the use of the G lobes , F rench , G reek ,-

and Latin .

’ O ther towns in the Madras Pres idency had

THE STORY OF‘

THE SCHOOLS 93

their Engli sh res idents , so M r . Holmes offered to aecom

m odate a few Boarders and the offer was found so conve

n ien t that certain parents wanted accommodation for thei r '

g ir l s as wel l as for thei r boys . Mr . Holmes was w i l l ing

to rece ive al l the pup i ls that he could get fo r in an adv er

t isemen t two months later he announced that he was goingto move to a larger house in wh ich

‘

apar tment s w i l l beallotted for the Young Ladie s en t i rely removed and sepa

rate from the Young Gentlemen .

The Madras A cademy was eminent ly successfu l ; bu t

the mixed board ing school was not i ts most commendab les ide ; and in the fol low ing year an en terpr i s ing lady -educa

t ion i st announced that she w as open ing in B lack Tow n a

F emale Board ing School ,’ in w h ich her young ladies

wou ld be gen teel ly boarded , tenderly treated , care ful lyEducated , and the mos t strict atten tion paid to their

Morals ,’ and the school was to be conducted as far as .

possib l e in the manner mos t app rov’

d of i n Eng land .

’

The en terpr is ing lady -educat ion ist was a M r s . M urray, w ho

had been a mistress in the F emale A sylum . Her syl labus

o f educat ion was of a more fem inine sor t than that w h ich

was fol low ed at the Madras A cademy for , as announced

in the prospectus , i t i ncluded Read ing and Writ ing , the

Eng l i sh language and A ri thmetic ; Music , F rench , Drawing

and Dancing ; wi th Lace , Tambour , and Embroidery , al l

sorts of Plain and F lowered needl e -work .

’

The tw o sy llabu

s es are interesting reminders as to what w ere the usualsub j ects of educat ion for European boys and girl s a centuryand a half ago .

Schools,therefore , were available for ch i ldren of every

c lass— European and Indian , r ich and poor bu t the schools

for I ndians , conducted e ither by miss ionari es or by ind igenous teachers , were of an e lementary kind ; and , apart

from Oriental studies in indigenous ins titu t i ons , there was

l itt le or noth ing in the way of h igher education for


I nd ians e ither in Madras or anywhere else in I nd ia . Thi s

condi t ion was altered,however, during the governorship of

Lord Will iam Ben t inck , the magnanimous i f not bri ll iant

g overnor -g eneral whose term of o ffi ce lasted for seven

ye ars , from 1 828 to 1835 .

During th is per iod every thing favoured educat ional

p rogress i n I ndia . There was peace in Eng land and there

w as peace i n I ndia . I t was a t ime of great educational

developmen ts in Eng land , as i s man i fe sted by the fact that

w i thin thi s p eriod the London Un ivers i ty and Durham

Un i vers i ty w ere opened , and the grea t Bri t i sh A ssocia t ion‘for the A dvancemen t of Sc ience was es tabl ished . Such

c ondi t ions i n Eng land had thei r influence in I ndia , and the

m ore so because Lord W i l l iam Bent inck was ardent for

p rogress . The open ing of the Madras M edical Coll ege

i n 1 835 was one of the s igns of the t imes . During Lord

Will iam Ben t inck ’ s term of office education in I ndia was

r eformed . Macaulay,afterwards Lord Macaulay , w as an

I nd ian offici al at the t ime , and he penned a notable repor t

o n educat ion in I ndia,i n wh i ch he bel i ttl ed vernacular

l earn ing and asser ted that the Governmen t of I ndia would

d o w el l to d iscountenance i t altogether , and to introduce

western l earning and the study of Engl ish l iterature in to

al l schoo l s under Governmen t control , and to make i t a

rule that the Eng l i sh language was to be the only medium

o f in s truct ion . Whether or not Macaulay’s v iews were

c orrect , they were adopted by the Government of Ind ia ,and Lord Wil l iam Bent inck i ssued in 1835 a resolution

in accordance therew i th,in which he sought to secure the

p eople’ s accep tance of Engl ish educat ion for the i r ch i ldren

b y noti fy ing that' a knowledge of Engl ish would in future

‘

be necessary for admiss ion in to Government service .

G overnmen t service i s part icularly coveted in India , andt he resoluti on encourag ed the foundat ion of school s of a

g ood c lass in wh ich Special attention would be g iven to th e

9 6 THE STOR Y OF MADRA S

the Pres idency Col lege .

’

The Pres idency Col lege cont i

nu ed to work in the rented build ing unt i l 1870, when the

bui ld ing that i t now occupies was publ ic ly opened by the

Duke of Edinburgh .

Pachaiyappa’

s College , a wel l-known H indu inst itut ion ,had i ts first beg inning in 1 842 . L ike the other colleges in

M adras , i t began as a school the school was cal led

UN IVE R S ITY SENATE HOU SE

Pachaiyappa’

s Cen tral I nst itut ion ,’ and was located in

B lack Town . The p resent bu ilding s were opened in 1 85 0

by S ir H enry Pot t inger , ,

an ex -governor of Madras,amid

a large ga thering of l eading European and I ndian resi dents

and for a number of years the annual Day ’ at Pachaiyap

pa’

s College was an importan t social event . Pachaiyappa

was a r ich and rel ig ious H indu , who made h is money as abroker in the Company ’ s service , and who died more than

a hundred years ago leav i ng a lakh of pagodas— some 3%lakhs of rupees - for temple purposes . The t rustees neg

lected the p rov i sinns of the will , whereupon the H igh Court

THE STOR Y OF THE SCHOOLS 97

a‘ssu

‘med control of the funds , which under the Cour t’

s con

t rol/ rose to the value of nearly Rs . 7d lakhs. Th e orig inal

amount was se t apart for the fulfi lmen t of the terms of the

PACHA IYAPPA ’S COLLEGE.

w i ll , and the surplus w as ass igned to educat ional purposes

i n Pachaiyappa’

s name .

The educat ionof g i r l s shared in the de ;velopment for

ih 1 842 the first par ty of N uns of the Presentat ion Order

was brought out from I reland , and a conven t , w i th a board“ing school and an orphan

'

ag e ,— the Georgetown Conven t

7

9 8,THE STORY OF MADRA S

ofgto -day— w as establ i shed in Black Tow n . The Vepery ;

Conven t School ’ and some of the other success ful convent .

school s in Madras are control led by nuns of the same

( ) rder .

Educat ion in I ndia was g iven further impe tus in the i

t ime of Lord Dalhou s 1e . Dur ing h is term o f,

_

off1ce ( 18481 856) the p resen t sy stem of educat ion , under a D irector of"Publ ic I n struc t i on , w as i ntroduced , and Governmen t w as

I

D OVETON PROTE STA NT COLLEGE

empowered to make l iberal educat ional g ran ts , and fr

o

establ ish un iversi t i es . The despa tch i n w hich the 1,

educat ional developmen ts w ere announced h as been cal l ed

the in tel lectual charter of I ndia .

Var ious inst i tut ion s in Madras are represen tative of th i s

later developmen t . A Governm en t 8

w h ich has g row n in to the Teachersw as establ i shed in 1 856 ,

to increase the number and the

effic iency of ind igenous teachers and the-

Madras Univers i ty w as

‘

incos

r pqrated i n 1 857 , for thegcontrol and’

thedevelopmen t of h igher educat ion . OI kz1n high schodls ,


en tertainmen ts , and other occasions of social reun ion .

The qua int dev i ces on the gates are st i l l preserved , and

the name of the old College’ s t i l l survives ; bu t the

assoc iat ion s have gone . N ot even as a ghos t does th e longrobed A rmenian merchan t tread the floors the j un ior

c i v i l ians,wi th the i r anc ien t p ranks and thei r antiquated

j es ts,have departed in the g reat hal l the l i l t of the song

and the frenzy of the fiddles for the dance and the am ate ur

mou th ing s of the drama are heard no more . A mult i tude

of turbanned clerks are pour ing forth the b lue -black ink

from the i r pens schoolmas ters haun t th e p or tals to pre s s

the ir c la ims for educa t 1onal g ran t s for the i r ow n part icular

school s ; and the c l ick of a chorus of typewr i ters i s the

only music that i s borne upon the breeze .

I have told the story of the school s . I t i s cred i table to

Madras ; for g reat th ing s have been done s ince that firs t

l i t tl e pub l ic school w as Opened in the F ort .

CHAPTER x1v

HER E AND THERE

Be fore clos ing the s tory of Madras , i t w i l l be w el l to

sp eak , a t least very b r iefly , of some of the p romin en t land

marks of the c i ty tha t we have not ye t descr ibed .

O f churches , w e should ment ion St . Georg e’ s Ca thedral .

I t was Opened in 1 8 1 6 ,no t as a cath edral bu t as an ord inary

church ; for Madras then w as not a d iocese b y i tsel f , bu t

w as a par t of the immense d iocese of Calcu tta . The new

church was regarded as a neces s i ty for a g rea t man y .

garden houses’ had sp rung up 1n and abou t the Moun t

Road , in the area that w as called the Choul t ry P la in ,’

and

the D irec tors of the Company ag reed w i th rep resen ta t ions

from Madras that i t was undes i rab l e tha t Eng l i sh res iden t s

w i th in the bound s shou ld be ab l e to stay aw ay from th e

Church -serv ices on Sunday w i th the reasonabl e excuse

that the neares t A ng l ican church— S t . Mary ’ s in the F ort

w as too far aw ay from thei r house s for them to be expec t

ed to a t tend . So the new church was bui l t ; and some

twenty years later,when Dr . Corri e

,A rchdeacon of

Calcutta , w as consecrated firs t B ishop of M adras , the

chu rch became the Cathedral Church of St . George .

’ St .

Georg e’s Cathedral i s a stately bu i ld ing , wi th a sp i re 1 39

fee t h igh , and i t s tands i n spacious g rounds . The total

cost was more than two lakhs o f rupees bu t nobody had

to be asked to subscr ibe , for the money was availab l e from

a p ecul iar source . I t was an ag e in which State lotter ie s

w ere in vogue ; Madras had fol low ed th e fash ion w i th a

ser ie s of official lotter ies , and a Lot tery F und had been

crea ted from the p rofi ts , so that there w as alw ays a good

1 02 THE STORY O F MADRA S

supply of cash avai lab l e for ex traord inary exp enses ,such as mending the roads or en ter tain ing dist ingui shed

v .i s itors I t w as from the Lottery F und that the cost of

bu i ld ing S t . Georg e' s w as me t .

S t . A ndrew ’ s Church -“most common ly known a s

The Kirk — was p lan ned w h i le St . George'

s w as

be ing buil t and i t i s remarkab le that i t w as not proj ected

5 7 GEORCE’S CATHEDRA L.

sooner than i t was : Sco tchmen i n Madras , as in o ther

parts of I ndia , apart from Scott i sh soldi ers , have been

manv ,and the names of a number of Madras road s and

h ouse s— such as Anderson Road , Graeme’

3 Road , Dav id

son Stree t,Brod ie Cas t le

,Lei th Cast le , Mackay

’

s

Garden s— are reminders of the fac t that no t a few of

the Scots of Madras have been influen t ial and a t th e t ime

w hen a second A ngl ican church was be ing bui l t in the city

i t was suggested to the“

Direc tors of the Company in

104 MADRA S

n early Rs . Z i lakh s more than the total

cost of St . Georg e’ s Cathedral , and the D irec tors w ere

i nd ignan t . The K irk , however , had been built ; and i t i s

one of the handsome churches of Madras . 1 I t i s a domed

bui ld ing , w i th a tal l steeple over the Grec ian facade ; and

some of i ts cri t i cs have said tha t the combination of dome .

and steep le g ives the ed ifi ce a s trangely camel -backed

ap pearance ; but , however that may be , the dome adds

beauty to the m ter ior . When the Church was Opened ,i t was found tha t the dome evoked d isturbing echoes , and

a larg e add i t iona l expen se had to be incur red to exorc ise

the w ander ing vo ices . The s teep le reaches a he igh t

of 1 66 1 feet w h ich i s fee t h igher than that of

St . George ’s

The Roman Cathol ic Cathedral a t M ylap ore has been

described on pag e 6 1 . A ske tch of the handsome bui ld ingi s g i ven on the nex t pag e .

The High Cour t , a red Saracen ic struc ture tha t sp readsi t sel f out over a large area be tween Georg e town and theF or t , i s a modern bui ld ing . I t was opened w i thin the

memory of elderly law yers of Madras , some of whom used

th emselves to p rac t i se in the big bui ld ing w h ich 1s now the

Collec tor ’ s O ffice , oppos i te the gate of the Por t Trust

p remises , and w h ich w as for many years the hab i tat ion of

the Supreme Court at Madras . The presen t H igh Court

i s a m igh ty monument to the developmen t of The Law

in Madras . I n the early days of F or t St . George the

Company adm in iste red i ts own j ust ice to i t s Ow n peop le ,and the cour t was held -in a bui ld ing in the F ort . Puni sh

men t s in those far-OH t imes , j udic ial or otherw i se , were

1 M ajon de Havi land ,of the Madras Eng ineers , bu i lt St . George

’

s

on a p lan des igned by Major Caldw e l l . h i s sen ior i n the service .

Major de Havi land both designed the Ki rk and bu i lt i t , and he

devoted h imse l f to h is w o rk"

and w as very proud o f h is creation,

w hich w as nevertheless much cri tic ized ,by unfriend ly c r iti cs .

’

HERE AND THERE 05

usually severe ; and the Records show tha t even a c i v i l

servan t of j un ior rank who gave troub le was l iable to be

awarded some such penal ty as to s i t for an hour or m ore

on a sharp -backed wooden hors e ,’

w i th or

'

w i thout

w eight s attached to the del inquen t’

s fee t . In the tow nthat g rew up outs ide the For t , j us t ic e as be tw een nat ives

of the so i l w as admin i s tered by an I ndian a d i kha r i , w ho

represen ted the lord ‘

Of the so i l . A s the Company’ s in .

fluence and author i ty increased , various cour t s of law w ere

created— and the Record s show that there w ere certa inly

crimes enough to j ust i fy the i r creat ion . A larg e number

Of the cr iminal trials i n the earl i er years of Madras w ere

in respect of thefts of ch i ldren , to sel l them as slaves ,esp ec ial ly to Dutch merchan ts along the coast , where the

v ict ims were not l ikely to be traced . S lavery was a recog ~

n ized condit ion of l i fe in old Madras , as indeed i t w as 1m

the whole of Europ e ; and in the Counc i l -book of F or tSt . George there i s st i l l to be seen

‘

an O rder; da ted


Sep tember 29 , 1 687, that M r . F raser do buy Hor ty young

Sound Slaves for the R t . H on’

ble Company,

” who w ere to

be made to work as boatmen in the Company ’ s fl eet of

surf -boats . I t w as in re ference to a s lave tha t the fir s t

c ase of tr ial by jury w as held in Madras,in 1665 ,

and i t

w as a ca u se cé léb ra. The p ri soner was a M r s . Daw es ,who was accused of hav ing murdered a slave g i rl in he rserv ice . The Governor h imself

,who

,l ike a dog e O f Ven ice ,

w as both ruler and j udge , w as on the bench , and the

twelve j urymen gave a unan imous verd ic t that M r s . Daw es

was g ui l ty Of the murther , bu t not in mannere and form e ,’

by which they seem to have mean t tha t the circumstance s

of the case exonerated her from the cap i tal charg e . Being

pressed to g ive a v erd ict w i thou t excep t i on or l imi ta

t ion ,’ they brough t i n a unan imous verd ic t of no t gu i l ty ,

’

whereupon the Governor fel t that , al though the woman

had been gu i lty of a crime , he had no help for i t bu t to se ther free . He thereupon w rote to the D irectors in Eng land ,e xpress ing hi s d isapproval of such an unexpected verdict ,

’

and not i fy ing that m h i s ignorance of the law and i t s

formal it ie s he was by no means confiden t that he had don e

the righ t thing ; and the end o f i t w as that the Governor ,presumably w i th the Directors ’ app roval , created tw o

j ust ices,on w hom w as thereafter to fal l the responsib i l ity of

hear ing all such serious cases . Chang e upon chang e

and tod ay the M adras High Cour t , w i th the var ious othercourt s in d i fferen t par ts of the c i ty , i s a very v i s ib le symbol

of the ser ious real i ty of the admin istration of j ust ice .

The s tory of the or ig in of the p r inc ipal l i terary and

sc i en t ific inst i tut ion s in Madras i s in terest ing . I n th e

O lden t imes,w hen there were no l i terary or sc ien t ific

magaz ines by wh ich an ex i le in the East could keep h im

sel f in touch w ith‘

the dev elopmen t s of gen ius throughou t th e

w orld,peop l e in Ind ia w ith l i terary or scien t ific taste s had

to be conten t to g rati fy the i r tastes w i th local r esearches ,


of a useful and ornamen tal botanical garden . He was

most en thus iast ic over h i s hobby , and he w as con t inually

carry ing ou t botan ical and ag r icultural exp er iments ,of medical or commerc ial or industr ial value . H is g rounds

w ere open to the pub l ic , and‘

Dr . A nder son ’ s Botanica l

Gardens’

became famous , and w ere a p lace of p opular

resort . Dr . A nderson died at the age of seven ty -two ;and in St . Georg e

’

s Ca thedral h i s memory i s g raced w ith

a fine statue that was carved by the mos t eminen t sculptor,

Si r F ranc i s Chan trey , and for wh ich h is med ical brethren

in the Madras Serv i ce subscribed . How many years after

h i s death h i s garden s con t inued to ex is t i t m igh t be d i ffi

cul t to say , but they m ust have su ffered badly from the

w an t of the arden t botani st ’s en thu s 1as t ic care . But the

botan ic sp i r i t tha t Dr . A nderson had star ted remainedal ive in Madras : for in 1 835 , w hen , to the reg re t

of many,h is gardens had been sp l i t u p in to bu ild ing - s ites

for tw o p r ivate re s idences , there w as st i l l a su ffic ien t

number of botan icall y inc l ined peop l e in the c i ty to found

the A g r i -Hort icultura l Soc i e ty of Madras , a st i l l -energet ic

body w hose beaut i ful gardens at Teynam pe t deserve to

be more general ly appreciated by the p ubl ic than they are .

The Madras L i terary Soc ie ty was founded a good many

years ago . I t s w ork now i s that of a c i rculat ing l ibrary

bu t in earl ier t imes i t was especial ly a l iterary soc ie ty ,’

and i ts mee t ing s , at w h ich lec tures w ere del ivered or

p ap ers w ere read and d i scussed , w ere crowded gather ing s

of the leading Europ eans in the ci ty . The orig inal L i ter

ary Soc i ety included sc ien t ific researches w i th in i ts m om ,

and sci en t ific members used to discourse l earnedly on

sc ien t ific subj ec t s of top ical in teres t , such as The Land ~

Crabs of Madras ,’ or f Pr eh is tor ic Tombs in the Salem

Dis tr ic t,or Gold in the VVynaad of Malabar .

’ The name

of the Soc ie ty remains , but the l i terary and sc ien t i fi c

m ee t ing s are no more . The last lecture , i f memory fails

HERE AND THERE 1 09

n,ot , ,

w as del ivered in the n ine t ie s , and the audience w as

not larg e enough or en thus ias t ic en oug h to denote that

lec ture s w ere any long er in demand . A s a‘

L i terary

Soc ie ty and A ux i l iary of the Royal A sia t i c Soc ie ty ,’ the

insti tution. has out l i ved i ts requ i remen t bu t i t has a valu

able store of more than books , new and Old , on a l l

subj ec ts,and i t i s con t inually add ing to the number ; and ,

a s a c i rcu lat ing l ibrary of a h ig h standard , i t fulfi ls an

excellent l i terary purpose .

The Madras M useum i s a magn ificent inst i tut i on . I t i s

t o the Madras L i terary Socie ty that i t ow es i t s being ; an d

the L i terary Soc iety d id Madras sp lend id serv ice in the

in i t iat ion thereof . Th i s w as in 1 85 1 , when the L i terary

Socie ty pre sen ted i t s fine collec t ion of g eolog ical spec i

mens to the Madras Governmen t as the nucleus of the

r ich and var ied store of treasures tha t the Madras M useum

now d 15 p lays . The Governmen t lodged the g eolog ica l

spec imens in the Collec tor’ s Cu tcherry ’

—a house w h ich

forms a part— the oldes t part — of the Museum bui ld ing s of

to-day . Before the Governmen t acqu ired the house in

1 830 for a_Cutcherry , the house had

' been priva te p rop erty ,and, under the name of the Pan theon

,

’ i t had been for

many years the p redecessor of the O ld Col leg e as the

A ssemb ly Rooms ’

, w here in Madras Soc iety had i ts bal l s ,i ts p lays , and i ts b ig d inners . The name of the old

bu i ld ing st i ll surv ives in the Pan theon Road , in w h ich theMuseum i s si tuated .

A h igh c i rcular bui ld ing on the Marina always attracts

a stranger’

s atten t ion . I t has a curiou s and in terest ingh istory . I t i s commonly called The I ce -House

,

’ and the

name suggests i ts orig inal p urpose . A number of years

ago , w hen ice -fac tor ies had not been s tarted and when inMadras the luxury of the

‘

cool drink ’

w as unknown,

somebody conceived - the idea of import ing ship -load s O f

blocks of ice from America . The idea was developed,and


abou t the, year 1840 a commerc ial scheme'

took shape. A

larg e circular bui ld ing was erec ted close to the sea-beach as

a reservoi r for the imported ice , w h ich sai l ing - ships broug ht

i n hug e b l ock s from the w estern wor ld and for a number

of years the schem e w as a commercial success . The ice

w as sold at four annas a pound , and many people i n

M adras . remember the t ime. w hen i t was the only i ce that

w as to be had , and larg e quant it i es of i t w ere sold . W i th

the even tual inst itut ion of ice - factor ie s , which could supp ly

ice at a much cheaper ra te , the en terpr i se came to an end ,and for a cons iderabl e t ime

.

the ice -reservoi r Was out Ofuse . Then somebody bough t i t , and put w indows into the

w alls , and turned i t i n to a res idence ; and meanwh i le, as

a resul t,of the construc t ion of the harbour , the sea

r eceded a long way dow n-the I ce -hou se shore . A s a

r es idence , how ever , a house '

of so strange a'

shape w as not

i n req uest ; and eventually some benevolen t H indus

turn ed i t into a free host el for any p reacher or re l ig i ous

teacher of repute ,'

w hatever h is creed,

‘

tvho might”

b e

temporar i ly s tay i ng in Madras , especial ly i f he sfe lt

that he had a r m essage to del iver to t he c i ty .

“Bu t ithe

reputab le p rophe ts w ho avai led themselves Of‘

the proffered

hosp i ta l i ty. ,w er e f ew ; an d the I ce -house ’

h ad a dese rted

l ook . A. few yea r s ago th e M adras Governmen t acqu i red

i t for the excel len t purpose ofza Brahman‘Widow s’ Ho

'

me "

for Brahman g i rl -w idows at school . Thi s i s the purpose

that 1 t now fulfi l s . F rom Ice -house to ch i ld -w idow s‘ home"I t i s a g reat tran sformat ion

— from a house w hose chambersw er e »

,stored of co ld~ ice to a hou se Whose

chambers are ag low’

w ith the w armth of young l i fe zTHé f6

i swroom to hop e; tha t . in cou r sec f time the Ch i ld -widows’

H om e w dlb ave ou t l l ved i ts p urpo se— ih th e 5 t ime ’

w hen

gent lem deals w i’

lb’

p feva i l , and the sorrow s Of child -widowsw i ll h ave ; ceased , a nd/the in st itut ion wi l l no long er‘ bit-u é

1 1 2 THE STOR Y OF MADRA S

natural harbour , and the breakers beat continually on the

shore ; and the so -cal led river was of l i t t l e p ract ical u se .

The nearest Ind ian tow ns were a good many m i l es away ,a nd the Portug uese merchan ts in the ne ighbour ing sett le

ment of Mylapore w ere commercial r ivals , who migh t have

been supposed to have’

absorbed all the trade tha t w as to

b e had . Yet Madras i s now a larg e c i ty , w i th more thanhalf a m i l l ion inhab i tan ts ; and i t s commerce and i t

'

s

industr ie s have been“so successfu l that i t s populat ion is st i l l

i ncreasing rapidly . Houses are being bui l t everywhere ,

y et the demand'

inc r eases . N ot only are th e suburbs beinge xtended , but moreover the garden s of exi s t ing house s are

being everywhere d i v ided , so as to p rov ide fur ther bui ldings i tes and two houses or more now s tand w i th in grounds

t ha t were formerly.

occup ied by only one .

B ut i t - i s ‘ wel l for Madras that , except in resp ec t of‘

s ome of - i ts st ree ts and p a r ti cular'

l ocal i t ies , i t i s no t a

c row ded c ity,and that there

“

i s therefor e room for such

a dd i t ions . M adras has been called the C i ty of D istances ,’

and i t s t i l l deserves the '

i iam e ; for w i th in‘

i t s l imi ts there

a r e . some magnificen t spaces , and in ”the garden of many

a pr ivate’

house the res iden t can s i t of an even ing ’

and

imag ine h imself i n a rural re treat ,‘

far from the maddin’

g

c row d .

L ike all c i t ies ,'

M adras has i ts . drab — v ery drab"q uar ter s and i ts mean— very meau l — and stragg l ing stree ts .

“

Madras w as no t la id out on“

any defini te plan .

' ‘

L ike

a nc ien t Rome,

' i t had in the beg inn ing to attract outsider s

to come and l ive there , and outs iders had to be g i ven muchli cense to do th ing s their own way , and the c ity w as

a l lowed to g row j ust as i t wou ld ; and in respec t of manyo f i ts parts there i s much room for crit ic i sm . But M adrasis a fine ci ty nevertheless , wi th a number Of stately buildings , bo th publ ic and p r i vate , and wi th g rea t poss ibi l i t i e s

and i ts Marina ’ can truly be called magnificen t .

‘

NO MEAN C I TY’

1 1 3

B ut the g reatest charm of Madras l ies in i t s h i story .

I t w as here that the foundat ions of the Ind ian Emp i re may

b e said to have been la id . The h is tory of M adras i s n ot a

s tory of aggre ss ive w arfare . The sett le rs w ere g ent l e

merchants , w hose weapon was not the s word but the pen ,

and whose only desire i t was to be left alone to carry onthei r business in peace . But the r i s ing c i ty w as a continual

m ark for the host i l i ty of commerc ial and pol i t i cal r ivals ,b oth European and I nd ian . I t was a s torm - cen tre , and

the storms were often fierce ; and the merchan t s w ere

O ften compel led to mee t force w i th force . Moreover,the

m erchan ts w ere men , and the i r do ing s there fore w ere by

no means always w i thout reproach ; bu t , w i th due

al low ance for human weakness , the history of Madras i s a

h istory of w h ich Madras may be p roud . The c i ty has

g row n from strength to streng th , and in i ts s tory there i s

much inspira t ion . This l it t le book has merely told the

story in par t ; but i t wil l have served i ts p urpose i f i t has

i n any way helped the reader to real ize that the story of

Madra s i s the s tory of no mean c ity .

1 1 6

Haidar Al i , 1 5 , 2 2 . 3 1—33 ,

Harbou r , The , 79

H ar ris H igh Schoo l , 9 9Hastings ,

Warren , 65 , 78

H igh Cour t , 1 9 4H indu H igh Schoo l , 99H o lmes , John , 9 2 . 93

Hyderabad ,N izam of , 64

Hynmer s , Joseph , 5 3

I ce -Hou se ,The ,

109

ew s in Madras ,20 ,

2 1 , 2 5

Labourdonnai s . 2 7

Lal ly ,30 ,

31 , 40 , 50 . 75

Langhorn (Governor ) , 58Law Co l lege , 87

L iterary Soc iety ,1 08

L ittle Mount , 60 , 6 1

Luz Church ,The . 62

Macartney (Governor) , 66Macau lay , 9 4Madras L iter ary Society ,

1 08

Mad re-de-D eus Church , 62

Male A sy lum , 4 3 ,44 , 9 1

M anucc i , 9 (Note)Mar ina , The , 79 ,

87

M armalong Bridge , 2 0

M astan , 62

Masu l ipatam ,2 ,7

Med ica l Co l lege , 87 , 94

M i l ler , R ev . Dr. , 9 5

I NDEX

Observatory , The ,1 07

Old Co l lege ,

’

The , 99 , 1 00

Orde , Ralph , 89 , 90

QueenMary'

s Col lege forWomen

87

Rajah Mahal (Chandrag ir i ) , 7Royapettah . 22

Mohammed A l i (See‘Walajah '

64Mohammedan s ,

2 1 , 2 2

Mohammedan Co l lege , 87

Moor s’

. 2 1 , 24

Murr ay ,M r s 9 3

M useum , The ,1 08 . 1 09

My lapor e ,1 , 5 ,

6 ,38 , 61 (See

a l so San Thome)

N a tt uko ttai C het t ies , 2 1

N aval Hosp ital R oad , 85

N ungumbaukam , 37 ,4 1

Pacha iyappa’

s Co l lege , 87. 96 , 9 7’

Par thasarathy Temp le ,1

Petrie,W . , 107

Peyton , Capt . , 27Peyalvar , 6 1

Pitt (Governor) , 73Pond icherry , 1 5 , 20 , 2 1 , 60

Poonamal lee (Na ik ) , 6 , 7

Popham’

s Broad w ay , 9 (N ote)Portuguese , The ,

1 , 2 , 5 , 6 , 39 ,

56 , 5 8 .1 1 2

Portuguese Bu r ying Place’

, 59

Pot tinger , S i’

r H . , 96

Pow ney fam i ly , The , 5 3

Presentation N uns , 9 7Pres idency Co l lege , 87 , 9 5 , 9 6Pu l icat , 2Pur sew aukam , 35 . 4 1

St.Andrew '

s (The‘K ir k 1 03 ,

1 04

St.Andrew ’

s Church (R . 58 ,

59St

.Gabrie l ’s H igh School , 9 5

St.George

’

s Cathedral , 1 01St

.Mary

’

s Cathedr al 59 ,

60

S t .Mar y

’

s Char ity Schoo l , 9 1S t .

Mary'

s Church (For t) , 1 7 ,

47— 5 5

S t .Mar y

’

s H igh Schoo l , 9 5St . M a t th ias

's Church ,

20

St.Patr ick ’s O rphanage ,

88

St.Thomas

’

s M ount , 6 1 , 62

San Thome,1 3 , 3 1 . 32 , (acqu is i

tion) , 38—40 , (r edoubt) , 43 ,

Cath edral , 61 ,1 04 (See a l s o

My lapor e’

Saunder s (Gover nor ) , 73Sea-Gate , 80

Senate House , 87 ,9 6

INDEX 1 7

S lavery in Madras , 1 06 U n ivers ity of Madr as , 66

9 1 U scan , Peter , 1 9 . 20

Teachers ’ Co l lege , 9 8 Vepery , 1 . (acqu is it ion ) , 37—88Thomas , S t . , 38 , 60 , 61 Vepery Convent School , 98T ipu Su ltan , 31 , 43 , 65 , 66 , 75

T i r uval luvar , 6 1

Tond iarpet , 35Tr incomalee , 27

Tr ip l icane ,2 2 , 32 , (acqu is i

tion ) , 35Tr ip l icane R iver

, 6 ,8 (See

CooumT r ip l icane Temp le ,

1

Yale (Governor) , 1 6 ,2 3, 35 5 7

Umdat -ul -Umara , 66 5 3 , 90

PR I NTED AT THE S . F .O K . PRE S S . sn ow s— 19 2 1 C 1 5732

Wa lajah (Naw ab) , 22 , 64- 66

Wa l l Tax Road 33

War ner , Rev . P 5 8 , 89

Washermanpet , 2 4Weavers ' Street , 2 3Whi te Tow n , 1 9 , 2 5 , 27

W idow s’

Home , The . 1 09

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