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THE STORY OF MADRAS
THE
STORY OF MADRAS
BY
GLYN BARLOW, M.A.
WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE AUTHOR
HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, MADRAS
1921
^^r.,^3
Ccu^pe/finet-
PREFACE
This little book is not a " History of Madras,"
although it contains a good deal of Madras history ; and
it is not a " Guide to Madras," although it gives
accounts of some of the principal buildings in the city.
The book will have fulfilled its purpose if it helps
the reader to realize that the City of Madras is a
particularly interesting corner of the world. This fact
is often forgotten ; and even many of the people who
live in Madras itself, and who are aware that Madras
has played an important part in the making of India's
history, are strangely uninterested in its historic
remains. They are eloquent perhaps in denouncing
the heat of Madras and its mosquitoes and the ini-
quities of its Cooum river ; but they have never a
word 'to say on its enchanting memorials of the past.
Madras has memorials indeed. Madras is an historical
museum, where the sightseer may spend man}^ and
many an hour — in street and in building — studying
old-world exhibits, and living for the while in the
fascinating past. Madras is not an ancient city ; its
foundation is not ascribed to some mythic king who
ruled in mythic times ; it has no hoary ruins, too old
to be historic and too legendary to be inspiring. But
Madras is old enough for its records to be romantic,
and at the same time is young enough for its earliest
accounts of itself to be — not unsatisfying fables, but
interesting fact. The story of Madras fills an absorb-
ing page of history, and the sights of Madras are well
484796
vi PREFACE
worthy of sj^mpathetic interest— especially on the part
of those whose lines of life are cast in the historic
city itself or within the historic presidency of which
it is the capital.
In the following pages certain places and events
have been briefly described more than once with differ-
ent details ; any such repetitions are due to the fact
that the Story of Madras has been told in a series
of vignettes, appertaining to particular buildings or
particular conditions, and each vignette had to be
complete in itself. It is hoped that such repetitions
will be of familiar interest, rather than tedious.
In respect of the facts that are recorded, apart from
general histor}', I am indebted principally to the valu-
able Records of Fort St. George, which the Madras
Government have been publishing, volume by volume,
during several years, and which I have studied with
interest since the first volume appeared. Of other
works that I have consulted, I must specially mention
Colonel Love's " Vestiges of Madras," which is a very
mine of information.
G.B.
Madras, 1921.
CONTENTS
Preface
Chap.
I.
11.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XL
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
Before the Beginning
The Beginning
Fort St. George
Development ...
' The Wall' ...
Expansion
Outposts
The Church in the Fort
Roman Catholic Madras
Chepauk Palace
Government House
Madras and the Sea ...
The Story of the Schools
Here and There
' No Mean City '
page
V
1
5
9
18
25
35
41
47
56
63
69
78
87
101
111
ILLUSTRATIONS
Chepauk Palace Frontispiece
PAGE
Map of Madras, about 1710 ... ... ... ... 10
Corresponding Map, 1921 ... ... ... ... H
Clive's House ... ... ... ... ... ... 16
A BIT of THE Black Town Wall ... ... ... 26
Central Gate of THE Black Town Wall ... ... 28
A Magazine IN THE Black Town Wall ... ... ... 30
* The Old and THE New ' ... ... ... ... 32
Map of Madras ... ... ... ... ... 36
San Thome Fort ... ... ... ... ... 42
Egmore fort (side viewO ... ... ... ... 44
Remains of the Egmore Fort ... ... ... ... 45
St. Mary's, Fort St. George ... ... ... ... 49
Government House, Madras ... ... ... ... 74
The Sea Gate ... ... ... ... ... ... 80
The Company's Flag ... ... ... ... ... 81
Surf-Boat ... ... ... ... ... ... 83
University Senate House ... ... ... ... 96
Pachaiyappa's College ... ... ... ... 97
Doveton Protestant College ... ... ... ... 98
St. George's Cathedral ... ... ... ... 101
St. Andrew's (The ' Kirk ') ... ... ... ... 103
St. Thome Cathedral ... ... ... ... ... 105
CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES
The East India Company established ... ... a.d. 160O
First English settlement, at Masulipatam ... ... 1611
Site of Madras acquired by Mr. Francis Day ... 1639
The acquisition confirmed at Chandragiri by the Hindu
' Lord of the Carnatic ' ... ... ... 163^
The Hindu lord of the Carnatic (the Raja of Chandragiri)
dethroned by the Mohammedan Sultan of Golconda ... 1646
The Company secure from Golconda a fresh title to their
possessions
The Sultan of Golconda dethroned by the Moghul
Emperor, Aurangzeb, who appoints a ' Nawab of the
Carnatic ' ... ... ... ... 1687
The Company secure from a representative of the Emperor
a fresh title to their possessions
Da-ud Klian, Nawab of the Carnatic, invests Madras for
three months, and is finally bought off ... ... 170?
In Europe, England and France are engaged in the War
of the Austrian Succession ... ... ... 1740-1748
Dupleix, who is possessed with the idea of making France
politically influential in India, is appointed Governor of
Pondicherry ... ... ... ... 1742
In the war in Europe he sees an opportunity for fighting
the English in India, and French forces under LaBour-
donnais capture Madras ... ... ... 174&
Treaty of Aix-laChapelle, by which Madras is restored to
the English ... ... ... ... 1748
Two Carnatic princes quarrel for the Nawabship ... 1749
The French and the English in South India join in the
quarrel on opposite sides. In the name of the claimant
whom the English supported, Clive captures Arcot,^
the capital of the Carnatic, and then defends the town
against the rival claimant and his French supporters ... 1749
The French are defeated in the open field, and the
struggle is at an end ... ... ... 1752
In Europe, England and France are engaged in the Seven
Years* War ... .. ... ...1756 1761
CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES
In India, Count Lally besieges Madras unsuccessfully for
more than two mouths ... ... a.d. 1758-1759
The English defeat the French at Wandivvash ... 1760
The English capture Pondicherry ... ... 1761
Treaty of Paris, by which Pondicherry is restored to the
French ... ... ... ... ... 1763
(The town was captured again in 1786 and in 1803).
Haidar Ali makes himself Sultan of Mysore about 1760,
and reigns till his death, which occurred in ... 1781
Tipu, his son, succeeds him, and reigns till he is slain in
, defending his capital, Seringapatam, against an assault
by the English ... ... ... ... 1799
(Madras was frequently disturbed by the raids of the
father and of the son ; and Tipu's death relieved
the townsmen of constant anxiety.)
The Supreme Court of Judicature established at Madras. 1801
In default of an heir, the Carnatic ' lapses ' to the Com-
pany ... ... ... ... ... 1855
The Madras Railway opened for traffic ... ... 1856
The Indian Mutiny ... ... ... ... 1857-1859
The Madras University instituted ... ... ... 1857
The High Court established ... ... ... 1861
CHAPTER I
BEFORE THE BEGINNING
Three hundred years ago, Madras, under the name of
-A . . .
ERRATUM
On page 1, jot * Madraspatnam ' read * Madraspatam.
perilous pursuit of the spoils of the sea. There was one
small town in the neighbourhood, namely, the Portuguese
settlement at Mylapore, where the tall fa9ades of the
several churches, peeping over the trees, formed a land-
mark for the Portuguese ships that occasionally cast
anchor in the roads.
Such was the scene in 1639, the year in which our story
of Madras begins. The Portuguese had already been in
India for nearly a century and a half ; and under their
early and able viceroys they had made themselves power-
ful. The stately city of Goa was the capital of their
Indian dominions, and they had settlements at Cochin,
Calicut, Mylapore, and elsewhere. But the influence of
the Portuguese was now on the wane. For nearly a cen-
tury they had been the only European power in India and
CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES
In India, Count Lally besieges Madras unsuccessfully for
more than two mouths ... ... a.d. 1758-1759
The English defeat the French at Wandiwash ... 1760
The English capture Pondicherry ... ... 1761
Treaty of Paris, by which Pondicherry is restored to the
French ... ... ... ... ... 1763
(The town was captured again in 1786 and in 1803).
Haidar Ali makes himself Sultan of Mysore about 1760,
and reigns till his death, which occurred in ... 1781
Tipu, his son, succeeds him, and reigns till he is slain in
.^~{^^A;■^r, i-.;^ /^onifal *>prinpranatam. acainst an assault
CHAPTER I
BEFORE THE BEGINNING
Three hundred years ago, Madras, under the name of
* Madraspatnam ' was a tiny rural village on the Coromandel
Coast. Scattered about in the neighbourhood there
were other rural villages, such as Egmore, Vepery, and
Triplicane, which are crowded districts in the great city
of Madras to-day. In Triplicane there was an ancient
temple, a centre of pilgrimage, dating, like many
village temples in India, from very distant tirnes ; this was
the Parthasarathy temple, which is the * Triplicane
Temple ' still. A little fishing village called Kuppam,
lying directly on the seashore, sent out, even as Kuppam
does now, its bold fishermen in their rickety catamarans in
perilous pursuit of the spoils of the sea. There was one
small town in the neighbourhood, namely, the Portuguese
settlement at Mylapore, where the tall fa9ades of the
several churches, peeping over the trees, formed a land-
mark for the Portuguese ships that occasionally cast
anchor in the roads.
Such was the scene in 1639, the year in which our story
of Madras begins. The Portuguese had already been in
India for nearly a century and a half ; and under their
early and able viceroys they had made themselves power-
ful. The stately city of Goa was the capital of their
Indian dominions, and they had settlements at Cochin,
Calicut, Mylapore, and elsewhere. But the influence of
the Portuguese was now on the wane. For nearly a cen-
tury they had been the only European power in India and
:THE, STORY OF MADRAS
the Eastern seas ; but merchants in other European coun-
tries had marked with jealous eyes the rich profits that the
Portuguese derived from their Eastern traffic, and com-
petitors appeared in the field. First came the Dutch, who
in India established themselves at Pulicat, some twenty-
five miles north of Mylapore. Holland had lately thrown
off the yoke of Spain, and was full of new-born vigour ;
and Dutch trade in the East — chiefly in the East India
Islands — was pushed with a rancorous energy that roused
the vain indignation of the decadent Portuguese. Six
years later, in 1600, came the English. The English
traders were employees of the newly-established East
India Company, and were sent out to do business for the
Company in the East ; and they had to face the opposition
of the Dutch as well as of the Portuguese. Their earliest
enterprise was in the East India Islands, and it was eleven
years before they gained their first footing in India, at
Masulipatam. Here they established an agency and did
very considerable business ; later they formed a fortified
sub-agency at Armagaum, a good way down the coast,
not far from Nellore. At first their fortunes went well ;
but local rulers exacted ruinous dues, and at Armagaum
in particular the local ruler, alarmed at the influence that
the English merchants had gained, set himself so seri-
ously to the work of handicapping their trade that Mr.
Francis Day, the Company's representative at Armagaum
and a member of the Masulipatam Council, proposed to
the Council that he should be allowed to seek a field for
commercial enterprise more favourable than either Arma-
gaum or Masulipatam. To Mr. Francis Day was com-
mitted the business of finding a suitable spot for a fresh
settlement.
It was an important commission. The East India
Company's existence depended entirely upon the profits of
their trade. The Company's enterprise at Armagaum was
BEFORE THE BEGINNING
hopeless ; at Masulipatam it was very unsatisfactory ;' and
Mr. Francis Day was appointed to find a place where the
commercial prospects would be bright.
It should always be remembered that the East India
Company was established purely as a commercial associa-
tion, with its head office ia London, and that its employees
in India were men with business qualifications, appointed
to carry on the Company's trade. The prime concern
even of an Agent or a Governor was the making of good
bargains on the Company's behalf — and sometimes on his
own — getting the best prices for European broadcloths and
brocades, and buying as cheaply as possible Indian mus-
lins and calicoes and natural produce, for exportation
to London, where they were sold at a large profit. Any
fighting in which the Company's servants engaged was
merely incidental to the pursuit of business in a land in
which the ruling sovereigns, as well as the many small
chiefs, were constantly at war. It is a maxim that
* Trade follows the Flag ; ' but in the case of India the
Flag has followed Trade.
It is as a commercial man, therefore, that we must pic-
ture Mr. Francis Day setting out on his commercial mission;
but it can be imagined that the English merchant, start-
ing on an expedition in which he would be likely to seek
personal interviews with rajas and nawabs and bid for their
favour, set out in such style as would do the Company
credit. In our mind's eye we picture Master Francis
Day, Chief of Armagaum, standing on the deck of one of
the Company's vessels lying at anchor in the Armagaum
roads, and receiving his colleagues' farewells. His garb
is that of a substantial merchant in the days of King
Charles I. It has none of the extravagances that were
the fashionable affectations of gay Cavaliers, but its
sobriety makes it none the less smart. He wears a purple
doublet and hose, a broad white collar edged with lace,
THE STORY OF MADRAS
and a gracefully-short black-velvet cloak. Curly hair falls
beneath his broad-brimmed black hat, but not in long
and scented ringlets such as were trained to fall below
the shoulders of fashionable gallants at King Charles's
court. He is in every way a fitting representative of the
Honourable Company.
The bo'sun has piped his whistle, and the last good-
byes have been said. The anchor's weighed, and the
white sails are spread to the breeze. Master Day waves
his hand to his colleagues in the surf -boat which is taking
them shoreward, and the ship is headed to the south. The
expedition is important — yes, and it was much more impor-
tant than Master Day imagined ; for something more
serious than profits on muslin and brocade was on the
anvil of fate.
CHAPTER II
THE BEGINNING
Mr. Francis Day was not sailing southward without
definite plans. As the result of enquiries for a promising
spot for a new settlement, it was his purpose to see if there
was a favourable site in the neighbourhood of the old
established Portuguese settlement at Mylapore. The
Portuguese authorities at Mylapore, with whom Mr. Day
seems to have corresponded, were not unwilling to have
English neighbours. The ill-success of the English
merchants at Masulipatam had probably allayed any fears
that they would be formidable rivals to Portuguese trade
at Mylapore ; and furthermore the Portuguese welcomed
the idea of European neighbours who would be at one with
them in opposition to the forceful Dutchmen at Pulicat»
up the coast, who showed no respect, not even of a
ceremonious kind, for any vested interests — commercial or
administrative — to which the Portuguese laid claim.
So Mr. Francis Day's vessel, standing no doubt well out
to sea as it sailed past the foreshore of the Pulicat lagoon
with its unfriendly Dutchmen, kept its course till the
Mylapore churches were sighted and showed that the
place where the first inquiries were to be made had been
reached. The sails were furled and the anchors were
dropped, and we may imagine that a salute was fired in
honour of the King of Portugal, and was duly acknowledged.
It was in winter that Mr. Francis Day arrived — a time
of the year when Madras looks its best and when the sea*
horses are not always at their wildest tricks ; and
THE STORY OF MADRAS
Mr. Francis Day landed without accident, and was pleased
with the scene. There are always breakers, however, on
the Coromandel Coast, and Mr. Day found the landing so
exciting that in his report to the Council at Masulipatam
he wrote of * the heavy and dangerous surf '. But after
an inspection of the surroundings he was satisfied with the
conditions ; he considered that at the mouth of the Cooum
river there was an advantageous site for a commercial
settlement ; and the local ruler, the Naik of Poonamallee,
following the advice of the Portuguese authorities, encour-
aged him in the idea of an English settlement within the
Poonamallee domain.
It is not surprising that Mr. Francis Day was pleased
with what he saw ; for Madras is not without beauty. In
those idyllic days, moreover, the Cooum river, which was
known then as the Triplicane river — and which even
to-day can be beautiful, although for the greater part of
the year it is no more than a stagnant ditch — must have
been a limpid water-way ; and to Mr. Francis Day, seeing
it in winter, in which season the current swollen by the
rain sometimes succeeds in bursting the bar, it must have
appeared almost as a noble river, rushing down to the great
sea — a river such as might well have deserved the erection
of a town on its banks. The fact that the Portuguese had
been at Mylapore for more than a century showed that a
settlement was full of promise — and the more so for men
with the energy of the English Company's representatives ;
and the conditions were such that Mr. Francis Day felt
himself justified in entering into negotiations with the
Naik for the grant of an estate extending five miles along
the shore and a mile inland.
The negotiations were successful : but the Naik was
subordinate to the lord of the soil, the Raja of Chandragiri,
who was the living representative of the once great and
magnificent Hindu empire of Vijianagar ; and any grant
THE BEGINNING
that was made by the Naik of Poonamallee had to be
confirmed by the Raja if it was to be made valid. Two
or three miles from Chandragiri station, on the Katpadi-
Gudur line of railway, is still to be seen the Rajah- Mahal,
the palace in which the Raja handed to Mr. Francis Day
the formal title to the land. The palace still exists, and it
is a fine building, though partly in ruins. It is constructed
entirely of granite, without any woodwork whatsoever;
but its abounding interest lies not in its structure but in
the fact that it was in this palace that the British Empire
in India may be said to have been begotten.
There is no little interest in the thought that it was the
Raja of Chandragiri that delivered the deed of possession
to Mr. Francis Day. The Raja was an obscure represen-
tative of a magnificent Indian Empire of the past ; Mr.
Francis Day was an obscure representative of a magnifi-
cent Indian Empire that was yet to be ; and the document
that the Raja handed to Mr. Francis Day was in reality a
patent of Empire, transferred from Vijianagar to Great
Britain. It was at Chandragiri that the British Empire in
India was begotten ; it was at Madras that the British
Empire was born.
Mr. Francis Day had fulfilled his mission. He had
secured territory where the conditions seemed to give
promise of success ; and his work was approved. His
superior officer, Mr. Andrew Cogan, Agent at Masulipatam,
came away from Masulipatam to take charge of Madras,
and with the co-operation of Mr. Francis Day he set about
the development of the Company's new possession.
Of Mr. Francis Day's personal history we know little
or nothing except that he was one of the Company's
employees, and that he founded first an unsuccessful
settlement at Armagaum — represented to-day by no more
than a lighthouse— and afterwards a successful settlement
at Madras. Later he was put in charge of the second
8 THE STORY OF MADRAS
settlement that he had founded, but he was relieved of, or
resigned, the office at the end of a year. He then went
to the Company's head-quarters at Bantam, in Java, and
afterwards to England. What finally became of him is
apparently unknown.
It would probably be difficult to say whether Mr. Francis
Day was a great man with great ideals, or was merely a
shrewd man of business, reliable for an important com-
mercial mission. Remembering that the Company was
strictly a commercial concern, we may think it likely that,
in fixing upon Madras as a site for the Company's business,
he was guided almost entirely by the question of trade-
profits, and that in his mind's eye there were no prophetic
visions of imperial glory. And it has been asked indeed
whether or not he really chose well in choosing Madras-
patnam by the Triplicane river as the site of the proposed
new settlement ; for there are those who have argued that
the prosperity of Madras has been due to dogged British
enterprise and placid Indian co-operation, not to natural
advantages, and that Madras has prospered in spite of
Madras. We must bear in mind, however, the limited
geographical knowledge of the times and the limitations
to Mr. Francis Day's choice ; and, whatever the verdict
may be, the fact remains that the Madraspatnam of Mr.
Francis Day's selection is now a vast city, and that the
Empire of India which was born at Chandragiri is now a
mighty institution.
CHAPTER III
FORT ST. GEORGE
When the tract of land at Madras had been formally
acquired, the European colony at Armagaum was forthwith
shipped thereto (February, 1640). According to accounts,
the colony, with Mr. Andrew Cogan at the head, assisted
by Mr. Francis Day and perhaps another chief official,
included some three or four British ^writers,' a gunner, a
surgeon, a garrison of some twenty-five British soldiers
under a lieutenant and a sergeant, a certain number of
English carpenters, blacksmiths and coopers, and a small
staff of English servants for kitchen and general work.
* Madras was a sandy beach . . . where the English
began by erecting straw huts. ' So says an old-time
chronicle,* the work of an early resident of Madras ; and, if
we take the word ' straw ' in a broad sense, we can easily
conceive the scene. In Madras the bamboo and the palmyra
grow in abundance, furnishing materials for the quick
provision of cheap and commodious accommodation ; and
we can picture the pilgrim fathers of Madras camped in
palmyra-thatched mat-sheds on the north bank of the
Cooum river, near the bar, the while that the houses within
the plan of the fort are being built.
1 The chronicle was written by Manucci, an Italian doctor of an
adventurous disposition, who, after varied and surprising experiences
in northern India, settled down in Madras in 1686, and married a
Eurasian widow. 'Manucci's Garden,' where he lived, covered a
large area which is now occupied by a number of the houses at the
Law College end of Popham's Broadway, on the side that is nearest
the sea. The garden was watered by a stream that used to flow
where the Broadway tram-lines now hold their course. Vide map,
p. 10.
12 THE STORY OF MADRAS
The * sandy beach ' has been waked from its longaeval
placidity. Trains of bullock-carts are lumbering along
new-made tracks, bringing stone and laterite and bricks
and timber from various centres; and endless files of coolies,
with baskets on their heads, are bringing sand from the
summer-dry edges of the bed of the Cooum river. In the
foreground of the picture, scores of chattering village-
labourers, from Triplicane and other hamlets hard by, are
working under the directions of the mechanical employees
of the Company, chipping stone, mixing lime, sawing timber,
carrying bricks and stones and mortar, or laying them
adroitly in place, with little dependence on line and
level.
In the course of a few months the buildings were suffici-
ently advanced for occupation. The main building was the
* factory,* which formerly signified a mercantile office; and it
was here that the Company's chief officials, who were
styled 'factors' (agents), assisted by writers and apprentices,
transacted the Company's business, and were also lodged.
Included amongst the buildings were warehouses for the
Company's goods, and also barrack-like residences for the
Company's subordinate British employees, civil and mili-
tary, according to their rank.
From the very beginning the settlement was called Fort
St. George, but it was several years before the buildings
were surrounded by a high and fortified wall. It was in
no spirit of military aggression that the Company's agents
enclosed their settlement with a bastioned rampart, from
whose battlements big cannon frowned on all sides round.
The Company's representatives were * gentle merchaunts,'
to whom peace spelt prosperity ; but the times were lawless,
and the gentle merchants were wise enough to recognize
that days might come when it would be necessary to defend
their merchandise and themselves, as well as the town of
Madras, from the roving robber or the princely raider or the
FORT ST. GEORGE 13
revengfiful trade-rival, and that military preparedness was
a dictate of prudence. The days came !
On such occasions the excitement in Fort St. George
must have been great. We can imagine the anxiety with
which, when the sentry gave the alarm, the gentle merchants
climbed upon the walls and looked out at the horsemen
that were to be descried in the distance, and asked one
another disconsolately whether it was in peace or in war
that they came. A brief notice of some of the occasions
on which the Fort was in danger will be interesting.
Some fifty years after the Fort had been founded, a
party of soldiers under the Commander-in-Chief of the
Mohammedan King of Golconda pursued some of the
King's enemies into Madras, *' burning and Robbing of
houses, and taking the Companies Cloth and goods," where-
upon the Governor of the Fort sent them word that " he
would use means to force them out of the Towne : Uppon
which they retreated out of shott of the Fort." They
returned, however, with additional strength, and for eight
months they besieged the stronghold, but without success ;
and then they wearied of their hopeless endeavour, and
march d away.
Later, a Dutch force, supported by Mohammedan cavalry,
besieged San Thome, which was then in the hands of the
French ; and for the purpose of the siege they occupied
Triplicane village, mounting their cannon within the walls
of Triplicane Temple, which they used as a fort. During
the several weeks of the siege of San Thome a powerful
Dutch squadron blockaded the coast of Madras ; and, as
Britain and Holland were at war in Europe, there was
constant anxiety in Fort St. George ; but the Dutchmen
contented themselves with the capture of San Thome, and
were prudent enough to let Fort St. George alone.
In the days of Queen Anne, Da-ud Khan, Nawab of the
Carnatic, at the head of a large force, was reported to be
14 THE STORY OF MADRAS
marching to Madras. In Fort St. George there was much
anxiety as to the purpose of his visit, and ' By order of the
Governor and Council ' various protective measures were
immediately proclaimed. The proclamation is to be found
in full in the Company's Minutes ; and we find an amusing
reminder of the Company's mercantile raison d'etre in the
fact that immediately after the military edicts comes the
order * That all the Company's cloth be brought from the
washers, washed and unwashed, to prevent its being plun-
dered.* The Nawab came, and he uttered threats, but he
was mollified with luxurious entertainment. Inviting
himself and his dewan and his chamberlain to dinner with
the Governor and Councillors in the Fort, he was received
with imposing honours, and was feasted in the Council
Chamber at a magnificent banquet. The minutes relate
that after dinner he was " diverted with the dancing
wenches," and finally he got " very Drunk." At breakfast
the next day in the Company's 'Garden,' His Highness
again got ** very drunk and fell a Sleep ; " and a few days
later he marched his army away. In his sober moments,
however, he had been slyly measuring the Company's
strength ; and six months later he came back with a larger
force, and blockaded Madras. He plundered all that he
could, and on one occasion his spoil included " 40 ox loads
of the Company's cloth." For more than three months the
blockade continued, and the Company's trade was entirely
stopped, and provisions in Madras were exceedingly scarce.
Da-ud Khan, eventually wearying of the unsuccessful siege,
named the price that would buy him off; and the Council,
fearing the wrath of the Directors at the loss of their trade,
were glad to come to terms. The Company's Minute on
the occasion is a brief but exultant record : ' The siege
is raised !. '
In 1746 there was a siege of a more serious sort.
England and France were at war in Europe, and suddenly
FORT ST. GEORGE 15
a squadron of French ships appeared off Fort St. George.
After a veek's siege, the English merchants capitulated to
superior force, and they were all sent to Pondicherry
as prisoners, and the French flag waved over Madras ;
but by the treaty which ended the war, Madras was
restored to the Company. Twelve years later Madras
was once more besieged by the French, but unsuccess-
fully, and eventually the French leaders marched their
forces away, quarrelling among themselves over their
ill-success.
On several occasions, bodies of horsemen in the service
of the adventurous Haidar Ali of Mysore, raided the
country almost up to the Fort ditch, and were sometimes
to be seen shaking their spears in defiance at the] sentries
on its walls.
These were not the only occasions on which Fort St.
George was assailed, but they suffice to show how neces-
sary it was that the Company's employees and their wares
should be housed within the walls of a fort.
Fort St. George in the beginning was very small. Its
external length parallel with th6 seashore was 108 yards,
and its breadth was 100 yards. When White Town,
which grew up around it, was fortified, there was ' a fort
within a fort ' {vide Map, p. 10) ; but eventually the inner
wall was demolished. At various times the outer wall has
been altered, but the Fort as we have it to-day is the self-
same Fort St. George nevertheless, a glorious relic of by-
gone times, and verily a history in stone.
The gates of Fort St. George open towards main
thoroughfares of Madras, and it is permitted to anybody
to pass in and out; but it is notyfeited nearly so much as
its historic associations deserve. Let us pass >yithin, and
see if we cannot catch something like inspiration from
the scene where so much history has been ^^la(de,, ^.nd
where a great Empire was born.
16
THE STORY OF MADRAS
An old-world feeling comes over us directly ve leave
the highroad and make our way down the sloped passage
and across the drawbridge over the moat, past the massive
gates and under the echoing tunnel that leads through the
mighty walls. Within we see the parapets on which in by-
gone days the cannon thundered at the foe. We pass
on into the great spaces of the Fort ; and in our imagination
CLIVE'S MOUSE
we can people them with ghosts of the illustrious — or
notorious — dead. It was here that, in the reign of King
James the Second, Master Elihu Yale assumed the
Governorship of Madras, did hard work in the Company's
behalf but also made a large fortune for himself, lost his
son aged four, quarrelled long and bitterly with his
councillors, and was at last superseded. It was here that
FORT ST. GEORGE 17
Robert Clive, aged nineteen, newly arrived from England,
entered upon his duties as an apprenticed writer in the
Company's service, at a salary of five pounds per annum ;
it was here, in St. Mary's Church, eight years later, when
he had won his first laurels, that he married the sister of
one of the fellow-writers of his griffinhood ; and iK was
here, in * Clive's House,' which is still to be seen (now the
Office of the Accoimtant-General), that he lived with his
wife. The ancient Council Chamber is replete with
historic associations ; and St. Mary's Church offers
material for many researchful and meditative visits. The
streets have history in their names. ' Charles-and James
Street,' for example, which is a present-day combination
of two streets of yore, is jointly commemorative of the
days of the Merry Monarch and of his royal but unfortu-
nate brother. Enough ! It is not my purpose to produce
a guide-book to Madras, but to promote an appreciation of
the historic interests of the city ; and I take it that the
reader has realized that Fort St. George is interesting
indeed.
CHAPTER IV
DEVELOPMENT
When an English colony had settled down in Fort St.
George, it was only to be expected that a town would
spring up outside. The personal necessities of the nume-
rous colonists had to be supplied, and purveyors and
baza^rmen and workmen made themselves readily avail-
able for the supply. The requirements in respect of the
Company's mercantile business were yet greater. The
Company's agents wanted not only native employees in
their office — * dubashes ' and 'shroffs' and clerks and
interpreters and porters and peons, but they also wanted
wholesale buyers of the cloth and other articles that they
imported from England for sale, and also merchants who
could supply them with large quantities of the Indian
wares that the Company exported to England ; and they
were able to get the men that they wanted.
A crowd attracts a crowd ; and when once a town has
begun to grow, it goes on growing of its own accord ; and
ten years after the acquisition of Madras, the population
of the town was estimated at as many as 15,000 souls.
The Fort itself, moreover, had to be enlarged ; for the
growth of the Company's business meant that more and
more factors and writers had to be brought out from
England, and more and more warehouses had to be provided
for the multiplied wares ; and, moreover, the increasing
lawlessness of the times necessitated a larger garrison.
Outside the Fort, Indian and other immigrants flocked
from near and far to settle down within the Company's
DEVELOPMENT 19
domains, looking for profit under the white men's protec-
tion ; and, with their enterprising spirit, they played no
small part in the development of Madras.
The town that grew up outside the little fort was divided
into two sections — ' the White Town ' and * the Black
Town.' The boundaries of White Town corresponded
roughly with what are now the boundaries of Fort St.
George itself. The original Black Town — ' Old Black
Town ' — covered what is now the vacant ground that lies
between the Fort and the Law College, and included what
are now the sites of the Law College and the High Court
{vide Map, p. 10). The inhabitants of White Town included
any British settlers not in the Company's service whose pre-
sence the Company approved, also all approved Portuguese
and Eurasian immigrants from Mylapore, and a certain
number of approved Indian Christians. WhiteP'Town
indeed was sometimes called the * Christian Town.* Black
Town was the Asiatic settlement. The great majority of
the original Indian settlers were not Tamilians but Telugus
-^written down as * Gentoos * in the Company's Records,
The Company's agents encouraged people of various
races to reside in Madras ; and the names of some of the
streets and districts of the town are interesting testimonies
as to the variety of the people who came.
Armenian Street — which began as an Armenian burial-
ground {vide Map, p. 10) — is an example. Armenians from
Persia, like their fellow-countrymen the Parsees, have
a racial gift for commerce ; and Armenian merchants had
been in India long before the English arrived. Enterpris-
ing Armenian merchants settled in Madras in its early
days to trade with the English colonists, and the Company's
agents were glad to have as middlemen such able mer-
chants who were in close touch with the people of the land.
The most celebrated of the earlier Armenians in Madras
was Peter Uscan, Armenian by race but Roman Catholic
20 THE STORY OF MADRAS
in religion, who lived in Madras for more than forty years,
till his death there in 1751, at the age of seventy. He was
a rich and public -spirited merchant. He built the Marma-
long Bridge over the Adyar river, on one of the pillars of
which a quaint inscription is still to be read, and he left a
fund for its maintenance ; he also renewed the multitude
of stone steps that lead up to the top of St. Thomas's
Mount. His inscribed tomb is to be seen in the church-
yard of the Anglican Church of St. Matthias, Vepery, which
in olden days was the chuchyard of a Roman Catholic
chapel. Within the last half-century the Armenian com-
munity in Madras has been rapidly declining, as the result,
probably, of inability to cope with the hustling style of
commercial competition in these latter days ; and only a
very few representatives of the race are now to be seen in
the city.
In Mint Street there is a small enclosure which is the
remains of what was once a Jewish cemetery of consider-
able size ; and the graves that are still to be seen are
interesting reminders of the fact that in bygone times there
was a Hebrew colony in Madras. In more than one of
the Company's old records the Jews in Madras are referred
to as being rich men, some of whom held positions of high
civic authority. Some of them were English Jews, and
others were Portuguese ; and most of them were diamond
merchants, on the look-out for diamonds from the mines of
Golconda, which were formerly very productive. The
English Jews exported diamonds to England, and imported
silver and coral to Madras ; coral was in great demand in
India, and was sent out by Jewish firms in London.
There is still a ' Coral Merchants' Street ' in Madras, a
continuation of Armenian Street, and it is a living reminder
of the old Jewish colony. The Golconda mines eventually
ceased to be productive, and Jewish diamond merchants
are no longer to be seen in the city, and the Jewish colony
DEVELOPMENT 21
has long since disappeared. Jews are notorious all the
world over as money-lenders, and it may perhaps be won-
dered why none of them survived as money-lenders in
Madras ; but the fact that Coral Merchants' Street is now
the habitat of Nattukottai Chetties, who are past-masters
in the art of money-lending, suggests that even the Jews
were unable to compete with Madras sowcars in the busi-
ness of usury, and that the Chetties displaced the Jews
who used to live in the street. The little Jewish cemetery
in crowded Mint Street is an interesting spot. One of the
antique tomb-stones has been caught in the branch of a tree
and has been lifted high in air, and is a quaint sight ; and
the deserted little Hebrew graveyard itself is symbolic of
the dispersion of the ancient people.
It is a curious fact that the Company's employees in
South India never spoke of Indian Mohammedans as
Mohammedans or as Moslems or as Mussalmans, but
always as * Moors.* It is thus that the name of * Moor
Street ' is to be accounted for. The original * Moors
Street ' was a street in which Mohammedans used to
live, and the fact that one particular street in a large
city should have borne such a name is evidence of
another fact, namely, that in the earlier years of Madras
very few Mohammedans resided in the town. It should
be remembered that Madraspatnam, Triplicane, Egmore,
and the other hamlets that went to make up the city
of Madras were all of them Hindu villages ; and it
was only now and again that Mohammedans, in some
capacity or another, found their way into the town. In the
earlier years of Madras a single mosque sufficed for all the
few Mohammedans therein. The mosque was located in
* Moors Street ' in old Black Town, a street that was the
predecessor of the * Moor Street ' of to-day. It was not
till nearly fifty years after the acquisition of the site of
Madras that a second mosque was built — in Muthialpet ;
22 THE STORY OF MADRAS
and these two small mosques supplied Mohammedan
requirements for many years. The fact is that Madras
was so frequently troubled by successive Mohammedan
enemies — the King of Golconda ; Da-ud Khan, Nawab of
the Carnatic ; Haidar AH, Sultan of Mysore ; his son
Tipu, and others — that the Company was disposed to
regard all 'Moors* with mistrust, so much so that they
discouraged Mohammedan residents ; and a measure was
passed with the special intention ' to prevent the Moors
purchasing too much land in the Black Town. ' There
are large crowds of Mohammedans in Madras now, grouped
especially in Chepauk and the adjoining Triplicane and
Royapettah ; and this is due to the fact that in later days
Nawab Walajah of Arcot, who was friendly to the English,
came and settled down in Madras. He built Chepauk Palace
for his residence, and the many Mohammedans who fol-
lowed him into the city formed the nucleus of a large
Mohammedan colony.
The name ' China Bazaar ' appears early in the Madras
Records ; and it would seem to have been the place where
Chinese crockery was on sale. Whether or not the sales-
men were Chinese immigrants I cannot say ; but the fact
that another street in Madras bears the name of * Chinaman
Street ' suggests that there was at one time a colony of pig-
tailed yellow-men in the city. The supposition is not
unlikely, for China was included within the sphere of the
Company's commercial operations, with Madras as the
head-quarters of the trade, and ships of the Company plied
regularly between China and Madras. Tea was one of the
articles of trade, but Chinese crockery was in great
demand in India, and ship-loads of cheap China bowls and
plates and dishes were imported ; and valuable specimens
of Chinese porcelain were highly esteemed by wealthy
Indians — so much so that it is on record that one of the
Moghul emperors had a slave put to death for having
DEVELOPMENT 23
*
accidentally broken a costly China dish which the emperor
particularly admired.
As the Company's trade was very largely in cloth, it
can be understood that the Company's agents were eager
to induce spinners and weavers to settle in Madras, so that
cloth might be bDUght for the Company at the lowest pos-
sible prices from the weavers direct. Elihu Yale, who was
one of the early Governors of the Fort, imported some fifty
weaver-families and located them in ' Weavers' street ',
the street that is now known as Nyniappa Naick Street, in
Georgetown. Some twenty-five years later, Governor
Collet established a number of imported weavers in the
northern suburb of Tiruvattur, in a village that was given
the name ' Collet Petta ' in the Governor's honour — a
name that degenerated into ' Kalati Pettah ' — ' Loafer-
land'— its present appellation. There was still a demand
for more weavers, and eventually a large vacant tract was
marked out as a * Weavers' Town, ' under the name of
Chindadre Pettah — the modern Chintadripet. In order to
attract weavers, houses were built at the Company's ex-
pense, which weavers were permitted to occupy as heredi-
tary possessions. It was formally decreed that " None but
Weavers, Spinners, and other persons useful in the Weav-
ing trade, Painters (i.e. designers of patterns for
chintz), Washers (bleachers), Dyers, Bettleca-merchants
(beetle-sellers). Brahmins and Dancing women, and
other necessary attendants on the pagoda (erected in
the settlement) shall inhabit the said town." In Chinta-
dripet to-day there are still many spinners and weavers ;
and one of the sights in Chintadripet — -growing gradually
more rare — is the spectacle of primitively-clad urchins or
grown men spinning in the streets with primitive gear
and in primitive fashion ; and it is interesting to recall the
fact that this has been going on in Chintadripet for nearly
two centuries — an industry which the Company established.
24 THE STORY OF MADRAS
Washermanpet is another auch locality. It was not so
called, as many people imagine, for being a land of dhobies
(male laundresses). In the Company's vocabulary a
washerman ' was a man who ' bleached ' new-made
cloth ; and the Company employed a number of bleachers.
The bleaching process needed large open spaces— washing-
greens — on which the cloth could be laid out in the sun to
be bleached ; and Washermanpet covered a considerable
area.
A great many more of the streets and districts of Madras
have history in their names ; but the few that we have
dealt with suffice to exemplify the manner of the expan-
sion of the city of Madras. We can picture the rustic
suppliers crowding into the city to sell the produce of their
fields ; we can picture the humble weavers migrating into
the city with their wives and their children, and with their
pots and their pans and their quaint machines, in response
to the Company's tempting invitation ; we can picture the
small tradesmen and the small mechanics setting up their
humble shops in the new city in which they believed that
fortunes were to be made. And in the higher grades of
life we can picture the grave Armenian merchants, the
submissive Jews, the mistrusted * Moors, ' and others
seeking interviews with Stuart or Georgian-garbed factors
of the Company, and eager all of them to turn the Com-
pany to profitable account.
CHAPTER V
* THE WALL '
Skirting a thoroughfare in Old Jail Street, in North
Georgetown, is still to be seen a part of ' the Wall ' that
protected Black Town in bygone days. This interesting
remnant of the Wall of Madras might before long have
been levelled to the ground, either by successive monsoons
or by philistine contractors in want of ' material ; * but,
with a happy regard for a relic of Old Madras, the Madras
Government have recently undertaken the task of preserv-
ing the ruin, which they have officially declared an * historic
memorial.'
The * Wall of Madras * is worthy of a meditative visit,
but, in order that the meditation may be on an historic
basis, it is necessary to know something about the Wall
itself.
We have seen that when the Company established them-
selves at Madras, in 1639, they first built a small fort for
the protection of themselves and their goods. Around the
walls of the Fort a number of Christians — English and
Portuguese and Eurasians — settled down, and what was
called * White Town ' came into being. Within a term of
years this White Town was itself enclosed within fortified
walls, which were finally identical with the wall round
Fort St. George to-day. There was thus * a fort within a
fort ; ' but in course of time the inner wall was pulled down.
Immediately outside the northern wall of White Town
lay Black Town, inhabited by Indians — employees and
purveyors of the Company, as well as merchants, shop-
keepers, industrialists, and the rest. It should be borne in
26
THE STORY OF MADRAS
mind that the site of this original Black Town was
altogether different from the site of the later Black Town,
the * Georgetown * of to-day. Old Black Town, as already
explained, extended from the northern wall of the Fort to
what is now called the Esplanade Road, and it covered the
ground that is now taken up by the Wireless Telegraph
enclosure, the grounds of the High Court, and those of the
Law College {vide map, p. 10)
Black Town was at first without any wall, and, as the
times were unsettled, the place was exposed to the serious
A BIT OF THE BLACK TOWN WALL
danger of being raided by any adventurous band of
marauders. Very soon, however, a beginning was made
of enclosing the town with a mud wall ; and in the reign
of Queen Anne a wall was built with masonry. Mean-
while, moreover, numerous houses and streets had sprung
up outside the wall, on the site of the Georgetown of to-day.
In 1746 the French captured Fort St. George; and
they destroyed not only the Black Town Wall but also
Black Town itself. It was a disastrous episode in the
history of Madras. For six years the English and the
• THE WALL' 27
French had been at war in Europe, and the relations
between the EngHsh and French colonists in India were
naturally strained ; but they were settlers within the domin-
ions of Indian rulers, and, although both the English and
the French had ships and soldiers for the protection of
their settlements, they realized that they were not at
liberty to make war upon each other. The settlers, more-
over, were employees of mercantile companies, working
for dividends ; and war, with its calamitous expenditure,
was not within their design. But Dupleix, the talented
French Governor of Pondicherry, had ambitious ideas for
the extension of French influence in India, and, in defiance
of Indian rulers, war broke out. In the beginning there
were several engagements at sea between a French
squadron under Labourdonnais and an English squadron
under Captain Peyton. The English squadron was worst-
ed, and had to put into Trincomalee Harbour, in Ceylon,
to refit. Thereupon Labourdonnais, after making quick
preparations at Pondicherry, sailed for Madras ; and the
alarm in the Fort and in the city must have been great
when his ships appeared off the coast and proceeded to
bombard the settlement. His guns, however, did but
little damage, and the citizens woke up the next morning
to find, to their great content, that the enemy had sailed
away during the night. Meanwhile Captain Peyton,
having repaired his ships, was unaware of what had
happened at Madras, and sailed from Ceylon to Bengal,
without touching at Fort St. George. Possibly he was
lured to Bengal by bogus messages of French origin ; for,
as soon as he was out of the way, Labourdonnais re-
appeared off Madras, better prepared than before. Having
succeeded in landing a considerable force, he erected
batteries on shore and from various points he bombarded
White Town, which was now the actual Fort St. George.
At the end of an unhappy seven days the garrison
28
THE STORY OF MADRAS
capitulated. The French marched into the Fort, and all the
English residents, civil and military — including the Gover-
nor and the Members of Council, and also Robert Clive,
who was then a young clerk —were sent to Pondicherry as
prisoners of war.
For nearly three years the French flag flew over Fort
St. George, until, in accordance with the Treaty of
CENTRAL GATE OF THE BLACK TOWN WALL
Aix-la-Chapelle, made between the combatants in
Europe, Madras was restored to the Company.
Daring their occupation the French had made great
changes. Feeling the necessity of strengthening their
position, their military commanders realized what had
apparently not been recognized by the Company's em-
ployees, untrained in war — namely that a weak-walled
native town lying right against the northern wall of Fort
THE WALL* 29
St. George was a serious danger. The houses offered
convenient cover for any enemies that might attack the:
Fort ; and, moreover, any disaffected or venal townsman
was in a position to give the assailants valuable help..
The French Governor set himself, therefore, to the deli-
berate destruction of Black Town. He first destroyed
the Town Wall, and then — for a distance of 400 yards
from the northern wall of White Town, or the present
Fort St. George — he demolished every house. The area
that is now represented by the Wireless Telegraph Station
and the grounds of the High Court thus became an open
space. Meanwhile they constructed a moat and glacis
round the walls of White Town, which, with certain altera-
tions, are the moat and glacis of Fort St. George to-day.
The Records express the melancholy interest with which
the Company's employees, when they re-entered Madras,,
took note of the changes that the enemy had made in the
familiar settlement. The Councillors apparently conceived
that it was in a wanton spirit of destruction that th&
greater part of Black Town had been wiped out ; for they
formally decided that the streets that had been destroyed
should be rebuilt. It may be supposed however, that their
military advisers counselled them otherwise ; for, so far
from the old houses being rebuilt, those that had been left
standing were destroyed. The open space was allowed to>
remain ; and ' New Black Town ' — the modern * George-
town ' — began to be developed. It continued to be called
* Black Town ' until the visit of the Prince of Wales
(afterwards King George V) to Madras in 1906 when it
was formally re-named * Georgetown ' — ostensibly in
Prince George's honour, but in reality to meet the wishes
of a number of the residents who sought an opportunity of
getting rid of what they regarded — quite reasonably
— as an objectionable name for the locality in which
their lot was cast. The disappearance of the historic
30
THE STORY OF MADRAS
name is a matter for historic regret, but a coticession had
to be made to the intelHgible wishes of residents.
The Company, bearing in mind that the French had
been able to capture Madras, realized that it was necessary
to strengthen the defences of Fort St. George and also to
provide adequate protection for the new native city that
had grown up outside the Fort's protective walls and was
absolutely without defence. The defences of the Fort
A MAGAZINE IN THE BLACK TOWN WALL
were taken in hand at once, though the work was by no
means completed ; and the Directors in England readily
sanctioned the construction of a wall round New Black
Town. It was well that the security of the Fort was
looked to without any long delay ; for in 1758, a large
French army under Count Lally besieged the Fort again —
but so unsuccessfully that, after sixty-seven days of persis-
tent endeavour, they beat a sudden retreat. It was a good
' THE WALL' 311
many years, however, before the building of the wall round
Black Town was taken seriously in hand — and then only
because the Company had been given a succession of sharp
warnings that it was absolutely necessary that new Black
Town should be protected.
The French themselves had given the first warning^
during the siege under Count Lally ; for, although they
were powerless against the Fort, they were able to enter
Black Town without opposition, and they made use of some
of the houses for the purpose of the siege. The next
warning was given a few years later when Tipu, the son of
Haidar Ali, Sultan of Mysore, after ravaging the country
round Madras, came so near to the city itself that parties
of his horsemen were scampering about in the suburb of
Chintadripet. Tipu's raid induced the Company to
bring forth the approved but long-shelved plans for a
wall round Black Town ; but there was still much more
discussion than work. The Company needed yet another
awakening ; and they got a stern one two years later. We
quote the story from the Company's official records, pub-
lished by the Madras Government. It is contained in a
minute in the official Diary of Fort St. George, dated the
29th of March, 1769, which runs as follows ; —
About 8 o'clock this morning several Parties of the Enemy's
(Haidar Ali's) horse appeared in the Bounds of this Place at
St. Thome and Egmore, from which latter place some guns were
fired at them. . . , At eleven o' Clock a fellow was caught plund-
ering at Triplicane and brought into Town, who gave Intelligence
that Hyder himself was on the other side of St. Thome with the
greatest part of his horse. In the afternoon Advice came that the
Enemy*s horse were moving from St. Thome round to the
Northward with a design, as was supposed, to make an attempt
on the Black Town.
It would have been difficult to have defended the
unwalled town ; and on the following day the Council
of Fort St. George sent Mr. DuPre, Chief Councillor and
32
THE STORY OF MADRAS
succeeding Governor, to Haidar All's camp, on the other
side of the Marmalong Bridge, to come to terms with the
invader ; and within three days a treaty had been made.
The treaty, said Mr. DuPre, writing to a friend, ** will do
us no honor ; yet it was necessary, and there was no
alternative but that or worse."
After this humiliation the building of the Wall was
regarded as a pressing necessity ; and within a year the
work was practically finished.
THE OLD AND THE NEW
Corner of the Medical School built into a portion of the
Black Town Wall.
It was well indeed that the work was done ; for a few
years afterwards, on the 10th of August, 1780, Haidar's
cavalry raided San Thome and Triplicane, killing a number
of people ; and the terror in Black Town was so great that
crowds of the inhabitants took flight. Fortunately, how-
•ever, the Governor was able to issue the following notifica-
tion for the reassurance of the public : — * A sufficient
number of guns have been mounted on the Black Town
wall,' and * nothing has been omitted that I can think of
for the security of the Black Town.' Haidar was not
THE 'WALL' 33
sufficiently venturesome to attack the fortified town ; but
the terror of the inhabitants was by no means at an end ;
for a little later came the disastrous news that a British
force sent out to meet the invader had been cut to pieces
at Conjeevaram. Eventually, however, the Mysoreans
were defeated, and the treaty of peace was a triumph for
the Company.
The long delay in the building of the Wall was chiefly
due to the fact that the representatives of the Company,
being commercial men, naturally gave their chief attention
to the Company's mercantile business, and were apt to
disregard the immediate necessity of expensive schemes
which the Company's military officers put forward as
strategic requirements. When the Wall was first talked
about, after the recovery of Madras from the French, the
Directors in England, who always kept a tight hand on the
Company's purse-strings, declared that the inhabitants of
Black Town ought to be made to pay for the cost of their
own defences, and should be taxed accordingly ; and the
name of the * Wall Tax Road,' which runs alongside the
Central Station to the Salt Cotaurs, is a standing reminder
of the Directors' decree, while the road itself is an indica-
tion of the alignment of the western wall. The people
protested indignantly against being taxed for the purpose,
and, as a matter of fact, the representatives of the Company
in India doubted whether they would be within their legal
rights in compelling them to pay ; and the tax was never
actually levied. What with the Wall Tax Road on the
west and the seashore on the east, the existing remains on
the north, and the Esplanade on the south, it is not difficult
to form a general idea of the direction of the four sides of
the wall within which the later Black Town was enclosed.
Such is the story of ' The Wall ; ' and the remains are
an interesting relic of lawless times when at any minute
it was possible that crowds of terror-stricken folk would
3
34 THE STORY OF MADRAS
suddenly be pouring through the gateways of the city
at the alarming news that strange horsemen were dashing
here and there in one or another of the suburbs, demanding
money and jewels from the people and slaughtering
unhappy individuals who tried to evade a response.
CHAPTER VI
EXPANSION
We have seen that the Company were careful to develop
both White Town and Black Town. They were not
content, however, with mere developments, for they took
pains also to extend their territorial possessions.
The strip of land that was acquired by Mr. Francis Day
was not large. Roughly, it extended along the seashore
from the mouth of the Cooum to an undefined point beyond
the present harbour, somewhere in the neighbourhood of
Cassimode, and inland as far as what was called the North
River, which is now represented by Cochrane's Canal —
the canal that runs between the Central Station and the
People's Park. It will be interesting to note how some of
the various other parts of the present city came into the
Company's possession.
On several occasions the representatives of various
dynasties that were successively supreme over Madras made
grants of additional land to the Company. The village of
Triplicane was the first addition, some twenty years
after the acquisition of Madras. The village was granted
by the representative of the Mohammedan King of Gol-
conda, for an annual rent of Rs. 175, which ceased to be paid
when the Golconda dynasty shortly afterwards came to an
end. Later, in compliance with a petition by Governor
Elihu Yale to the Emperor Aurangzeb, the Company
received a free grant of * Tandore (Tondiarpet), Perse wacca
(Pursewaukam), and Yegmore (Egmore).' Still later, in
the reign of Aurangzeb's son and successor, the village
MADRAS
(approaimately)
Scale .7 .,.,..•• vil
4= ..-•••"
3AY
or
3enc;az.
Hejerervces:
I Tke Fort
zXenkrdl Station
^.Qoyt. House.
4. St. Qeor^cs Cath}>
5. Myjlaji^re, Ccutl'^-
EXPANSION 37
of Lungambacca (Nungumbaukam), now the principal resi-
dential district of Europeans in Madras, was granted to the
Company, together with four adjoining villages, for a total
annual rent of 1,500 pagodas (say Rs. 5,250). The Emper-
or's officers argued that the rent ought to have been larger,
but the Company, conforming to the spirit of corruption
that was in fashion, were wily enough to send by a Brahman
and a Mohammedan conjointly a sum of Rs. 700 ' to be
distributed amongst the King's officers who keep the
Records, in order to settle this matter.' The village of
Vepery — variously called in olden documents Ipere, Ypere,
Vipery, and Vapery — lay between Egmore and Purse-
waukam ; and the Company, being naturally desirous of
consolidating their territory, proceeded at once to try to
obtain a grant of the place ; but successive efforts on the
part of Governor Elihu Yale came to naught ; and it was
not till much later (1742) when the Nawab of Arcot was
lord of the soil, that Vepery was acquired from the Nawab.
The manner of its acquisition is interesting. The preceding
Nawab had just been murdered, and the Carnatic army
disowning the ambitious rival who had murdered him,
proclaimed the dead Nawab's son as his successor. The
new Nawab was but a youth, and he was residing at the
time in one of the big houses in Black Town. The
Company were politic enough to celebrate the lad's acces-
sion with grand doings. They escorted him in a splendid
procession to the Company's Gardens, which were situated
along the bank of the river Cooum, where the General
Hospital and the Medical College now stand. In the
Gardens there was a fine house, containing a spacious hall,
which the Company had specially designed for great occa-
sions ; and there the lad's accession was formally announced ;
and finally he was escorted in procession back to his
dwelling. The Company profited by their politic demon-
stration ; for, in return for their courtesies to the young
38 THE STORY OF MADRAS
Nawab, the lad gratified their desires by making them a
rent-free grant of the village of Vepery, and also of Peram-
bore and other lands. It may be added that the boy-king
was unfortunate ; for he was murdered within two years of
his accession, at the instance of the man who had murdered
his father.
San Thome was acquired in 1749 ; and the story of the
acquisition is not without interest. The names *San Thome'
and * Mylapore ' are often used as alternative designations
for one and the same locality ; but in bygone days the two
names represented quite different places. Mylapore was a
very ancient Indian town, which seems to have been in
existence long before the birth of Christ. San Thome was
a seventeenth century Portuguese settlement close by. It is
an old tradition that St. Thomas the Apostle was martyred
just outside Mylapore ; and when the Portuguese first came
to India some of them visited Mylapore to look for relics
of the saint. They found some ruined Christian churches,
and also a tomb which they believed to be the tomb of St.
Thomas ; and soon afterwards a Portuguese monastery
was established on the spot. A Portuguese town grew up
around the monastery ; and in course of time the town
became a commercial centre, and was surrounded with a
fortified wall, and was the Portuguese settlement of San
Thome, over against the Indian town of Mylapore. An
Italian dealer in precious stones who visited India in the
sixteenth century wrote of San Thome that it was as fair
a city ' as any that he had seen in the land ; and he descri-
bed Mylapore as being an Indian city surrounded by its
own mud wall. Mylapore was thus in effect the Black
Town of San Thome ; but in later days the two towns were
combined. When the English came to Fort St. George,
the power of the Portuguese was already waning ; and the
development of the influence of the English at Madras
meant a further lessening of the influence of the Portuguese
EXPANSION
at San Thome ; and it was a natural consequence th;.t '^ *
Thome, including Mylapore, became a prey to successiv ,
assailants. Its first captor was the lord of the soil, the
Mohammedan King of Golconda. Next, the Fren.' h took
it from Golconda ; and two years later Golconda, with the
help of the Dutch, recaptured it from the French. The
Dutch were content with a share of the plunder for their
reward, and left Golconda in possession. On the self-inter-
ested advice of the English at Fort St. George, Golconda
destroyed the fortifications. He then put the town up for
sale. The Company were prepared to buy it, and so were
the Portuguese ; but a rich Mohammedan named Cassa
Verona found favour with Golconda's Moslem officials^
and secured the town on a short lease. Next it was leased
to the Hindu Governor of Poonamallee ; and then for a big
price it went back again to the Portuguese. Towards the
end of the seventeenth century the great Moghul Emperor
Aurangzeb dethroned the lord of the soil, the King of
Golconda ; and, although the Portuguese were not turned
out of San Thome, it was now a part of the Moghul Empire,
and was put in charge of a Moslem ruler. After Aurang-
zeb's death, the'' Moghul Empire broke up, and the Nawab
of Arcot eventually became independent, and San Thome
was part of his dominions. In 1749, when Madras,
after the French occupation, was restored to the English
by an order from Paris, in accordance with the treaty of
Aix la Chapelle, Dupleix at Pondicherry was bitterly disap-
pointed at the rendition, and he formed designs for the
acquisition of San Thome for France, as a set-off for the
loss of Madras. The English at Fort St. George had infor-
mation of his schemes, and, being in no way desirous of
having aggressive Frenchmen for close neighbours, they
forestalled Dupleix by persuading the Nawab to make the
Company a grant of Mylapore, alias St. Thome,' on
condition that the Company should undertake to help the
40 THE STORY OF MADRAS
Nawab with men and money whenever he should call upon
them to do so. It was thus that San Thome became a
British possession ; and, although it was afterwards ravaged
successively by the French under Count Lally and by
Haidar Ali of Mysore, it has remained a British possession
ever since.
We have said enough to show the manner in which the
different parts of the modern city of Madras came into the
hands of the English. The methods were not always
wholly admirable ; but we must remember that the East
India Company was a mercantile association, fighting for
its existence under diamond-cut-diamond conditions ; and
we must remember also that, although its representatives
at Madras were sent out to India not to rule but to earn
dividends for the shareholders, yet the Company's rule
over Madras was so upright that crowds of people were
continually flocking into Madras to enjoy its benefits.
CHAPTER VII
OUTPOSTS
The suburban lands which were successively granted to
the Company were not protected either by the walls of
Fort St. George or by the walls of Black Town, and it was
accordingly necessary that special means should be adopted
for their defence. The Company's military engineers
devised the erection of small suburban forts C redoubts '),
block-houses, and batteries, which were to be mounted with
cannon and to be in charge of an appropriate garrison, and
were to serve as outposts for the protection of the outlying
quarters of the city.
On the northern side of Black Town the batteries and
block-houses were linked together by a thick-set hedge of
palmyras, bamboos, prickly-pear, and thorny bushes, such
that neither infantry nor cavalry could force a way through.
Later it was decreed that the ' Bound Hedge,' as it was
called, should be extended so as to encircle the whole city.
The work, however, was never completed, for as late as
1785 an influential European inhabitant of Madras, address-
ing the Government on the subject of the insecurity of the
city, wrote : —
" Was the Bound Hedge finished, no man could desert, No Spy
could pass ; provisions would be cheap. All the Garden Houses,
as well as thirty-three Square Miles of Ground, would be in
security from the invasions of irregular Horse."
Of the suburban fortifications the two largest were at
Egmore and at San Thome. Next in size were those at
Nungumbaukam and at Purse waukam. Of smaller works
there were many. Of the fortifications at Nungumbaukam
OUTPOSTS 43
and at Purse waukam all traces have disappeared ; but of
the larger ones at San Thome and at Egmore interesting
remains are still to be seen.
The remains of the San Thome Redoubt stand within the
grounds of * Leith Castle,' a house that lies south of the
San Thome Cathedral. The remains are ruins, but the
massive walls fifteen feet high and three feet thick, are
suggestive of the purpose for which the redoubt was built.
The * Records ' show that the San Thome Redoubt, built in
1751, was a very complete fortification, with a moat forty
feet wide, a glacis, and all the other works that are usual
in respect of a well appointed building of the kind. That
it was of a large size is to be seen in the fact that, when the
French under Count Lally were besieging Madras, an
English officer was officially directed ' to stay in St. Thome
Fort with the Europeans belonging to Chingleputi four
Companies of sepoys, and fifty horse.'
The Egmore Redoubt was a good deal older than that of
San Thome. It was constructed in the days of Queen
Anne. It was intended, of course, for the special protec-
tion of Egmore ; but in those distant days when trips to
the hills were unknown, even Egmore was a health-resort in
respect of the crowded Fort St. George, and it was offici-
ally reported that the Egmore Redoubt might * serve for
a convenience for the sick Soldiers when arrived from
England, for the recovery of their health, it being a good
air.' The Egmore Redoubt was evidently a need ; for
the * Records ' tell us that on various occasions its guns
were fired at the enemy. The enemy were for the most
part horsemen of Haidar Ali or of Tipu, his son and suc-
cessor; and in 1799 the year in which Tipu was killed,
the need for the Redoubt disappeared. Adjoining the
precincts of the Redoubt were the premises of the Male
Asylum, an Anglo-Indian Orphanage, which required to
be extended, and in the following year the Madras
44
THE STORY OF MADRAS
Government gave the Redoubt to the Asylum, and the two
premises were turned into a common enclosure. In the
beginning of the present century the Directors of the
Asylum sold their Egmore estate to the South Indian
Railway Company and removed to new premises in the
Poonamallee road ; and what remains of the Egmore
Redoubt is now the habitation of some of the Railway
employees.
THE EGMORE FORT (SIDE VIEW)
The remains are of quaint interest. At some date or
another the authorities of the Asylum had an upper story
added to one of the military buildings, with the result
that there is the strange spectacle of a row of windowed
•chambers on the top of a buttressed and battlemented wall,
windowless and grim. The upper story has been built into
the^ battlements in such a manner that the outline of the
battlements is still clearly visible, and the building is a
<:omposite reminder of old-time war and latter-day peace.
ill
5
If
II
P
46 THE STORY OF MADRAS
The whole of the lower part of the building, with its mas-
sive walls and its frowning aspect, is of curious and
suggestive interest ; and the ground around, which is exten-
sively bricked, is a reminder of the fact that the Redoubt
in its original form was large indeed. The place provides
interesting material for antiquarian speculation.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CHURCH IN THE FORT
St. Mary's Church within the walls of Fort St. George
is the oldest Protestant church in India, and, except for
some of the oldest bits of the Fort walls, it is the oldest
British building in Madras city, and even in India itself.
It dates from 1680.
When Madras was rising upon its foundations, the
Company's employees were not only without a church but
also without a pastor ; for the Company did not think it
necessary to go to the expense of providing a chaplain for
so small a community. But it was an age in which
religious services on Sunday were seldom neglected ; and
it may be conceived that, in default of a chaplain at Fort
St. George, the Governor himself or his delegate read the
Church Service on Sunday morning and evening, in the
hearing of the assembled employees of the Company, and
perhaps also some selections from the published sermons
of distinguished Elizabethan divines.
In the Portuguese settlement of San Thome there were
numerous Roman Catholic priests, and some of them
ministered to the numerous Portuguese and other Roman
Catholic residents of White Town around Fort St. George,
as also of Black Town close by. So numerous indeed
were the Roman Catholic residents of White Town within
three years of the foundation of the Fort that the Governor
permitted a French priest to build a chapel in the Town.
It was thus not a little anomalous that in a British settle-
ment, founded under the auspices of such a redoubted
48 THE STORY OF MADRAS
antipapist as Queen Elizabeth, there was a Roman Catholic
church with a priest in charge, yet neither a church nor a
pastor of the established religion.
In 1645, however, the Company's Agent at Fort St»
George forwarded to higher'authority " a petition from the
souldiers for the desireing of a minister to be here with
them for the maintainance of their soules health ; " and in
the following year a chaplain was sent out. There was
still no Protestant church, but the celebration of religious
services was held in careful regard ; for the chaplain read
morning and evening prayers every day of the year in a
room in the Fort appointed for the purpose, and it was
compulsory upon all the youthful employees of the Com-
pany to attend regularly, under the penalty of a fine.
Chaplains came and chaplains went, and for some
sixteen years they continued their ministrations in the
room in the Fort. A small church was then built ; but,
with the Company's developing trade, the population of
White Town increased so rapidly that before long the
little church was too small for the number of the worship-
pers. When Mr. Streynsham Master, after a long term of
years in the Company's service, was appointed Governor
of Madras, one of his first acts was the circulation of a
voluntary subscription paper for the building of a church
that should be worthy of the Company's rapidly developing
South Indian possession. He headed the list with a
subscription of a hundred pagodas (Rs. 350), a sum which
represented much more than it does now ; for it was
more than Mr. Streynsham Master's pay for a whole
month as Governor of Madras. Subscriptions from the
Councillors, as well as from the factors and writers and
apprentices, were proportionately big ; and on the 28th of
October, 1680, St. Mary's Church was solemnly opened,
and the guns of the Fort roared forth loud volleys in
honour of the event. The steeple and the sanctuary were
THE CHURCH IN THE FORT
49
added later ; but, for the rest, the present church, except
for details, is the very same church that was built some
two hundred and fifty years ago, in the reign of Charles II.
It is interesting to note that the church at Madras was
built during a period when in London a great many
churches were being built — or rebuilt — after the Great
Fire. Church-building was in vogue, with the distinguish-
ST. MARY'5, FORT ST. GEORCE
ed Sir Christopher Wren as the builder in chief ; and it
is not unlikely that what was being done so energetically
in London was one of the influences that inspired Mr.
Streynsham Master to be so earnest over a scheme for
building a church in Madras. It may be noted, moreover,
that St. Mary's Church within the Fort at Madras is of a
style that was very much in fashion in London at the time.
4
50 THE STORY OF MADRAS
In deciding to build a new church, the Governor and his
colleagues realized that if ever the Fort should be bombard-
ed, a shot from the enemy's guns was as likely to fall
upon the church as upon a fortified bastion ; so the roof
of the church was made ' bomb-proof,* in preparation for
possibilities. Events proved the reasonableness of the
measure ; for on more than one occasion the church was a
factor in war.
In 1746, when the French were besieging Fort St.
George, the British defenders lodged their wives and
children and their domestic servants in the bomb-proof
church, and they took refuge there themselves in the
intervals of military duty. During the three years that
they occupied Madras, the French, fearing that they might
be besieged in their turn, used the bomb-proof church as a
storehouse for grain and as a reservoir for drinking-water.
The church organ they sent off to Pondicherry as one of
the spoils of war.
At the end of the war Madras was restored to the Com-
pany, but a few years later the Fort was besieged by the
French again. During the interval, some of the houses
had been made bomb-proof, and in these the women and
children were lodged, but St. Mary's Church was used as
a barrack, and its steeple as a watch-tower. Lally, the
French commander, failing to capture Madras, had to
march away with his hopes baffled ; but, notwithstanding
its bomb-proof roof, the church, as also its steeple, had
been badly damaged during the destructive siege, and the
necessary repairs were considerable.
A few years later the English had their revenge. They
captured Pondicherry, and they destroyed its fortifications.
They recovered, with other things, the organ that had
been looted from St. Mary's ; but, as a new one had in the
meanwhile been obtained for St. Mary's, the recovered
instrument was sent to a church up-country. According
THE CHURCH IN THE FORT 51
to accounts, moreover, they took toll for the Frenchmen's
lootlby!sending to St. Mary's from one of the churches in
Pondicherry the large and well-executed painting of the
* Last Supper,' which is still to be seen in the church.
The origin of the picture is not known for certain ; but it
is believed with reason to be a fact that it was a spoil of
war from Pondicherry on one or another of the three
occasions on which that town was captured by the British.
The stray visitor who wanders round St. Mary's without
a guide is apt to be astonished at what he sees in the
churchyard. A multitude of old tombstones, of various
ages and with inscriptions in various tongues, lie flat on
the ground, as close to one another as paving-stones, in
such fashion that the visitor must wonder how there can
be sufficient room for coffins below. As a matter of fact,
the coffins and their contents are not there, and the inscrip-
tions of * Here lyeth ' and * Hie jacet ' are not statements
of facts. The explanation is an interesting story, which
is worth the telling.
In the Company's early days, the 'English Burying Place/
(vide Map, p. 10) lay a little way outside the walls of White
Town, in an area which is now occupied by the Madras
Law College with its immediate precincts. Later, when
a wall was built round old Black Town, the Burial
Ground was included within the enclosure of the wall. An
English cemetery in a corner of an Indian town was not
likely to be treated with any particular respect ; and on
various counts the ' English Burying Place ' was a sadly
neglected spot. Nearly every Englishman that died in
Madras was an employee of the Company, and was a
bachelor, without any relatives in India to mourn his loss
His colleagues gave him a grand funeral ; but his death
meant promotion for some of those selfsame colleagues,
and his place in the Company's service was filled up by an
official * Order ' on the following day. A big monument
52 THE STORY OF MADRAS
ar-r : — . - . . — ^ — ■ '- — ~ . , ' rr
in the old-fashioned brick-and-mortar ugliness was piously
built over his remains, and possibly there was genuine
regret at a good fellow's loss ; but water is less thick than
blood, and there was no near one or dear one in India to
take affectionate care of the big tomb ; so it was left to
itself to be taken care of by the people of Black Town.
An unofficial description of Madras dated 1711 speaks of
the 'stately Tombs' in the English cemetery, and an official
Record of the same year speaks of the unhallowed uses
to which the stately tombs were put. The Record says
that " Excesses are Comitted on hallowed ground, " and
that the arcaded monuments were ' turned into receptacles
for Beggars and Buffaloes. " We have seen in a previous
chapter that the French, when they captured Madras,
demolished the greater part of old Black Town together
with its wall, and that the English, when they were back
in Madras, completed the work of demolition. In the
two-fold destruction, both French and English had suffi-
cient respect for the dead to leave the tombs alone. But,
now that Black Town was gone, the big tombs were the
nearest buildings to the walls of White Town and Fort St.
George ; and when the French under Lally besieged
Madras a few years later, they used the ' stately Tombs '
as convenient cover for their attack on the city. The
cemetery now was a receptacle not for beggars and buf-
faloes but for soldiers and guns. The siege lasted sixty-
seven days, during which the cemetery was a vantage
ground for successive French batteries. It is therefore
not to be wondered at that when Count Lally had raised
the unsuccessful siege, the authorities at Fort St. George
decided that the ' stately tombs ' were to disappear. The
tombs themselves were accordingly destroyed, but the
slabs that bore the inscriptions were laid in St. Mary's
churchyard. At a later date some of them were taken up
and were removed to the ramparts, for the extraordinary
THE CHURCH IN THE FORT 53
purpose of ' building platforms for the guns, ' ^ but eventu-
ally they were restored to the churchyard and were
relaid as we see them to-day.
When the burying ground was dismantled, two of its
monuments were allowed to remain. They are still to be
seen on the Esplanade, outside the Law College, and the
inscriptions can still be read ; and the two tombs are
interesting memorials of the past. One is a tall, steeple-
like structure, which represents a woman's grief for her
first husband, and for her child by her second. Her
first husband was Joseph Hynmers, Senior Member of
Council, who died in 1680, her second was Elihu Yale,
Governor of Madras, whom she married six months after
the death of her first. When her little son David died at
the age of four, she had him buried in her first husband's
grave. The other monument covers a vault which holds
the remains of various members of the Powney family, a
name which figured freely in the list of the Company's
employees throughout the eighteenth century. When the
cemetery was dismantled, members of the Powney family
were still in the Madras service, and it was doubtless in
respect for their feelings that the vault was not disturbed.
It may be added that amongst the gravestones that
pave the ground outside St. Mary's Church there are
several that record the death of Roman Catholics. It is
supposed that they were taken from the graveyard of the
Roman Catholic church in White Town, which was demo-
lished by the Company when they recovered Madras after
the French occupation.
Although the gravestones around St. Mary's Church
bear the names of persons who were buried elsewhere,
there are memorials within the church itself which mark
the actual resting-place of mortal remains. Most of the
^ Rev. F. Penny's Church in Madras, vo\.i, p. 366.
54 THE STORY OF MADRAS
monuments in St. Mary's are of historic interest, and it
is fascinating indeed to stroll round the building and study
Storied urn or animated bust ;
but it is noteworthy that no inscription records the very
first burial within the walls of the church. It is note-
worthy too that the forgotten grave was not the grave of an
obscure person, but of Lord Pigot, Governor of Madras ;
and, in view of the extraordinary circumstances of his
death, the first burial is the most notable of all.
George Pigot was sent out to Madras as a lad of eighteen^
to take up the post of a writer in the Company's service.
He worked so well that he rose rapidly, and at the early
age of thirty-six he was appointed Governor of Madras.
It was in the middle of his eight years' governorship that the
French under Lally besieged Madras for sixty-five days ;
and Governor Pigot's untiring energy and skilful measures
were prime factors in the successful defence. After the
war he did great things for the development of Madras ;
and when he resigned office at the age of forty-five and
went to England, the strenuous upholder of British honour
in the East was rewarded with an Irish peerage. Well
would it have been for Lord Pigot if he had settled down
for good on his Irish estate ! But twelve years later he
accepted the offer of a second term of office as Governor of
Madras. It is not infrequently the case that a man who
has been eminently successful in office at one time of his
career fails badly if after a long interval he accepts the
same office again. Times have altered and methods
that were successful before are now out of date. In
Lord Pigot's case the conditions at the time of his
second appointment were very different from those at the
time of the first. On the first occasion he had risen to
office with colleagues who had been his companions in the
service. On the second occasion he was sent out to Madras
as an elderly nobleman selected for the job, and as a stranger
THE CHURCH IN THE FORT 55
to his colleagues, who moreover were particularly given
to factious disputes. It is not unlikely too that Lord
Pigot himself had become touchy and overbearing in his
declining years. Any way, he quarrelled with his Council-
lors almost immediately, and within six or seven months
there had been some very angry scenes. He had been
accustomed to being obeyed, and in his wrath at being
obstinately resisted he went to the length of ordering the
arrest not only of some of the leading members of Council
but also of the Commander-in-Chief. The Councillors
check-mated the Governor's order by arresting the
Governor ! It was a daring proceeding. He was arrested
one night after dark, while driving along a suburban road
on his imagined way to a friendly supper, and he was sent
as a prisoner to a house at St. Thomas's Mount. He was
in captivity for some nine months, while the triumphant
Councillors were representing their case to the Directors in
England ; and then he died, in Government House, Madras,
to which when he fell ill he had been transferred. It is on
record that his remains were specially honoured with burial
within St. Mary's Church — the first burial within the
building — but no permanent memorial was raised to the
unhappy Governor's memory ; and the particular spot
where he was buried is only a matter of conjecture.
St. Mary's Church is less than 250 years old. Compared
with hundreds of the grey-walled or ivy-covered churches
in England, St. Mary's at Madras is prosaically new ; but
it is of exceeding interest nevertheless. Madras itself is a
great and historic city, v/hich owes its existence to British
enterprise, with Indian co-operation, and St. Mary's Church,
as the oldest British building therein, is the earliest mile-
stone of progress. It is not a church that is best visited,
like Melrose Abbey, ' in the pale moonlight,* but in the
bright daylight, when the inscriptions on the tombstones
without and on the monuments within can be clearly read.
CHAPTER IX
ROMAN CATHOLIC, MADRAS
When the Enghsh first came to Madras, there were
numerous Roman Catholic churches in the neighbouring
Portuguese settlement of San Thome, but there were none
within the tract of land that Mr. Francis Day acquired in
the Company's behalf. When, therefore, at the Company's
invitation, a number of Portuguese from San Thome, both
pure-blooded and mixed, came and settled down in the
Company's White Town, they were necessarily compelled
to resort to the ministrations of Portuguese priests who
belonged to the San Thome Mission ; and within a year of
the foundation of Fort St. George, the Portuguese mission-
aries built a church in the outskirts of the British settle-
ment. This was the Church of the Assumption, which
stands in what is still called * Portuguese Street ' in
Georgetown, and is therefore a building of historic note.
To the Company's representatives the ministrations of
Portuguese priests to residents of Madras were objection-
able ; for the relations between Madras and San Thome
were by no means friendly- It is true that when Mr.
Francis Day was treating for the acquisition of a site, the
Portuguese at Mylapore had furthered his efforts ; but such
a mark of apparent good will was no more than the outcome
of Portuguese hostility to the Dutch ; for they hoped that
the English at Madras would be powerful allies with
themselves against the aggressive Hollanders. As soon,
however, as Madras had begun to be built and English
trade to be actively pushed, jealousies arose and dis-
agreements occurred ; and the Company's representatives
ROMAN CATHOLIC, MADRAS 57
chafed at the idea that Portuguese priests should be the
spiritual advisers of residents of Madras.
In 1642, when Madras was in its third year, a certain
Father Ephraim, a French Capuchin, chanced to set foot
in Madras. Father Ephraim had been sent out from Paris
as a missionary to Pegu ; and he had travelled across
India from Surat to Masulipatam, where, according to his
instructions, he was to have secured a passage to Pegu in
one of the Company's ships. His information was out of
date ; for the Agency had lately been transferred from
Masulipatam to Madras, and the Company's ships for Pegu
were sailing now from Madras instead of from Masuli-
patam ; so Father Ephraim journeyed southward from
Masulipatam to look for a vessel at the new settlement.
At Madras no vessel was starting immediately, and Father
Ephraim had to bide his time. Meanwhile he made him-
self useful by ministering to the Roman Catholics of the
place. Official and other documents show that Father
Ephraim was a very devout and a very able man. He was
* an earnest Christian,' ' a polished linguist,' able to con-
verse in English, Portuguese and Dutch, besides his own
French, and he was conversant with Persian and Arabic.
He had the charm of attractive friendliness, which is so
common with Frenchmen, and he captivated all with whom
he conversed. The Portuguese and other Roman Catholic
inhabitants of Madras, to whom the Company's disapproval
of the ministrations of Portuguese priests had been a fre-
quent source of trouble, formally petitioned Father Ephraim
to settle down in the city ; and the Governor in Council,
greatly preferring a French priest to a Portuguese and
thoroughly approving of Father Ephraim personally, sup-
ported the petition with a formal order that, if the priest
would stay, a site would be provided on which he might
build a church for his flock. Father Ephraim himself was
iiot unwilling to stay, but he was under orders for Pegu,
58 THE STORY OF MADRAS
and, furthermore, Madras was within the diocese of San
Thome, and the Bishop was not likely to approve of a
scheme in which the ministrations of his own priests would
be set at naught in favour of a stranger. The Company,
however, was influential. A reference was made to Father
Ephraim's Capuchin superiors in Paris, and they approved
of his remaining in Madras ; another reference was made
to Rome, asking that the British territory of Madras should
be ecclesiastically separated from the Portuguese diocese
of Mylapore, and the Pope issued a decree to that effect.
A site for a church, as also for a priest's house, was
provided in White Town, within the Fort St. George of
to-day, and a small church, dedicated to St. Andrew, was
built ; and for a good many years it was the only church of
any kind in the settlement.
The Portuguese ecclesiastics of Mylapore were never
reconciled to this ecclesiastical separation of "Madras,
and when Father Ephraim went by invitation to Mylapore
to discuss certain ecclesiastical business, he was forthwith
arrested, clapped in irons, and shipped off to Goa and
lodged in the prison of the Inquisition. The Governor of
Fort St. George took the matter in hand, but Father
Ephraim was in prison more than two years before he was
eventually released and sent back to Madras.
Later, Father Ephraim rebuilt St. Andrew's Church on a
larger plan, and the building was opened with ceremony ;
and Master Patrick Warner, the Company's Protestant
Chaplain at Fort St. George, complained indignantly to the
Directors in England that Governor Langhorn had cele-
brated the popish occasion with the * firing of great guns *
and with * volleys^ of small shot by all the soldiers in
garrison.'
Father Ephraim had already built a church in old Black
Town, which seems to have stood somewhere within what
is now the site of the High Court. Another French
ROMAN CATHOLIC, MADRAS 59
Capuchin had meanwhile come to Madras to help him in his
ministrations to his ever-increasing flock ; so the church in
Black Town had its regular pastor.
After more than fifty years of self-sacrificing work in
Madras, Father Ephraim died of old age, sincerely esteemed
by all who knew him.
Some years after his death St. Andrew's was again
rebuilt, and it was now a large edifice, with a high bell-
tower, and a small churchyard around. In the suburban
district of Muthialpet there was also a * Portuguese Bury-
ing Place,' which is now the * compound ' of the Roman
Catholic Cathedral and its associated buildings in Armenian
Street ; and a small church stood within this enclosure.
Adjoining the Portuguese Burying Place was the * Ar-
menian Burying Place,' which is now the enclosure of the
Armenian church ; and it was the Armenian Burying Place
that gave the name to the street.
When Madras was captured by the French, there were
people who said that the French priests in Madras had given
information to their countrymen ; and three years later,
when Madras was restored to the Company, the Governor in
Council confiscated St. Andrew's church. A reference to
the Directors in England as to what they were to do with
the confiscated building brought back the very decisive
reply that they were ' immediately on the receipt of this,
without fail to demolish the Portuguese Church in the
White Town at Madras, and not suffer it to stand." The
church was demolished accordingly, as also a Roman
Catholic chapel in Vepery. The church in old Black
Town had already been demolished by the French when
they destroyed the greater part of old Black Town itself ;
and, in accordance with another edict of the Directors in
England, by which the Company's representatives in Madras
were " absolutely forbid suffering any Romish Church
within the bounds, or even to suffer the public profession
60 THE STORY OF MADRAS
of the Romish religion," Roman Catholicism was altogether
scouted in Madras.
Twenty-five years later, the English troops, after defeat-
ing the French in various engagements, captured Pondi-
cherry and demolished its fortifications; and the peace of
Paris left the French in India powerless. With the
danger of French aggression removed for good, the Com-
pany were less intolerant of the religion which Frenchmen
professed ; and a few years later they paid the Capuchin
priests some Rs. 50,000 as compensation for the destruc-
tion of the church in White Town and of the chapel in
Vepery.
With funds thus in their hands, the Capuchin fathers
set about building a new church in the * Burying Place.'
This new church, which they built in 1775, was the edifice
which is now the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Armenian
Street. On the gate-posts appears the date 1642, but this
was the year in which the Company made a grant of
the land for a Roman Catholic Cemetery and in which
Father Ephraim arrived and the Madras Mission began, and
is not the date of the building of the present church or
of its predecessor. The Capuchin missionaries continued
in charge of Roman Catholic affairs in Madras until 1832,
in which year they were put under episcopal jurisdiction.
Reference has been made in this chapter and elsewhere
to the churches that were already in existence in Mylapore
when the English first settled in Madras. According to
local tradition, the Apostle St. Thomas made his way to the
East, and, after preaching in various parts of India, settled
down in the ancient Hindu town of Mylapore, where he
made numerous converts. The Hindu priests, indignant
at the loss of so many of their clients, sought the mission-
ary's life. The Apostle, according to the tradition, lived
in a small cave on a small hill — the * Little Mount ' — fed
by birds and drinking the water of a spring that bubbled up
ROMAN CATHOLIC, MADRAS 61
miraculously within the cave. Driven from the cave, he
fled to another hill, a mile or so away — ' St. Thomas's
Mount ' — where he was killed with a lance. The dead body
was buried at Mylapore. Such is the story ; and in the
present-day church on the Little Mount the visitor is shown
a cave which is said to have been the Apostle's hiding-
place ; and within the nave of the cathedral at Mylapore
he is shown a hole in the ground — now lined with marble —
in which the Martyr's remains are said to have been buried.
When the Portuguese came to Mylapore in the early part
of the sixteenth century, they built a church upon the ruins
of an ancient church that had enclosed the tomb ; and the
new church became eventually the Cathedral of San Thomv^
The sixteenth century building was pulled down in 1893,
and the present Cathedral — a handsome Gothic structure —
was built. Mylapore is now a suburb of Madras, and i-
within British dominion ; but the bishopric, which was
originally supported byjthe King of Portugal, who had the
right of nominating the bishop, is still supported by the
Portuguese Government.
Mylapore has a history of its own that is outside the
scope of the * Story of Madras ;' but a few words about
the glories of a city that is now a suburb of Madras will
not be out of place.
Mylapore and Madras, standing side by side, are a con-
junction of the old and the young. Mylapore, or Meliapore,
the ' Peacock City ' of the ancient Hindu world, has existed
for twenty centuries, and perhaps a great many more ;
Madras has existed less than three. It was at Mylapore
that, according to tradition, the body of the martyred
Apostle St. Thomas was buried ; Mylapore was the birth-
place of Tiruvalluvar, an old and illustrious Tamil author
who belonged to the down-trodden class, and of Peyalvar,
an eminent Vaishnavite saint and writer ; it was here
that a company of Saivaite saints, Appar and his fellows,
^^■^
62 THE STORY OF MADRAS
assembled together and wrote their well-known hymns ;
and it was here also that Mastan, a renowned Mohammedan
scholar, lived and wrote and died.
Of the ancient glories of Mylapore no vestige remains ;
but several of the churches of the Mylapore diocese belong
to the sixteenth century, including the celebrated * Luz'
Church, the Church of the Madre-de-Deus at San Thome
and the little Church of Our Lady of Refuge between Myla-
pore and Saidapst, besides the churches at the Little Mount
and St. Thomas's Mount, of which the latter is a sixteenth-
century development of an old chapel that existed there
before the coming of the Portuguese.
Ut is of interest to note that there are those who say that
a Mylapore church gave its name to the city of Madras.
They say— not, I believe, without evidence — that the rural
village of 'Madraspatam, where Mr. Francis Day selected
a site for the Company's settlement, had been colonized by
fisherfolk from the parish of the Madre-de-Deus Church —
the Church of the Mother of God — and that the emigrant
fisherfolk called their village by the name of their parish, and
that the name was eventually corrupted into * Madras.' The
origin of the name * Madras * is uncertain ; and the explana-
tion is at any rate interesting and not unlikely to be true.
CHAPTER X
CHEPAUK PALACE
Among the interesting buildings in Madras must be
included Chepauk Palace, which was built about a century
and a half ago as a residence for the Nawab of the
Carnatic, and which is now the office of the Board of
Revenue. The high wall that enclosed the spacious
Saracenic structure in its palace days has been pulled
down, and the public can now gaze at a building that
was once carefully screened from the public eye, and
can enter at will without having to satisfy the scrutiny
of armed men at the gate. A change indeed — from the
sleepy residence of a Muhammadaa ruler, with his harem
and his idle crowd of retainers, to bustling offices where
a multitude of officials and clerks are working out the
cash accounts of the Government of Madras !
The 'Carnatic' wa? a domiaioQ that extended over
the territory that is now includad in the CoUectorates of
Nellore, North Arcot, SDUth Arcot, TrichiaopDly, and
Tinnevelly, The town of Arcot was the capital of the
dominion, and the Niwab of ths Caraitic was somstimes
spoken of as the Nawab of Arcot. Chapauk Palace
beloags to ths history of th3 Ciraitic, and a few historical
notes will make things clear.
In our first chapter w3 iatimtei that Madras, when
Mr. Francis Day acquired it, was within the domain of
the disappearing Hindu Empire of Vijiana,?ar, of which
the living representative at the time was the Raja of
Chandragiri, from whom Mr. Francis Day accordingly
64 THE STORY OF MADRAS
obtained a deed of possession. Seven years afterwards,
the Raja of Chandragiri was a refugee in Mysore, driven
from his throne by the Muhammadan Sultan of Golconda,
who assumed the sovereignty of Hyderabad and the
Carnatic. The Sultan of Golconda thus became the re-
cognized overlord of Madras ; and the Company were
careful to secure from their new sovereign a confirmation
of their possession. But the power of the Sultan was
destined to fall in its turn ; for Aurangzeb, the Moghul
Emperor at Delhi, being desirous of uniting all India under
Moghul rule, waged war against the Sultan of Golconda —
who, as a Shiah Mohammedan, was a heretic in
Aurangzeb's eyes — and defeated him. Aurangzeb put
Hyderabad under a Nizam whom he named ' Viceroy of the
Deccan' and the Carnatic under a Nawab who was to be
subordinate to the Viceroy. But the Emperor who
succeeded Aurangzeb had none of their predecessors'
greatness ; and soon after Aurangzeb's death the Nizam
of Hyderabad assumed independence, with the Nawab of
the Carnatic as his vassal.
In 1749 there was a quarrel for the Nawabship. The
French at Pondicherry supported one claimant, and the
English at Madras supported the other. This was the
gallant Clive's opportunity. Exchanging the clerk's pen
for the officer's sword, the youthful ' writer ' marched with
a small force to Arcot and captured it on behalf of the
Company's nominee, and then sustained most heroically a
lengthy siege. Clive triumphed ; and Mohammed AH,
otherwise known as Nawab Walajah, became undisputed
Nawab of the Carnatic. Later, with British support, the
Nawab renounced his allegiance to Hyderabad, and reigned
as an independent prince.
In his capital at Arcot, Nawab Walajah, who had many
factionary enemies, would assuredly have found himself
in a dangerous centre of intrigue ; but he was wise in his
CHEPAUK PALACE 65
generation ; for as soon as he had gained his indepen*
dence he sought and obtained from the Governor of
Madras permission to build a palace for himself within
the protective walls of Fort St. George. Arrangements
for the work were made ; and one of the streets of the
Fort — the street which still bears the name of * Palace
Street ' — received its name because it was the street in
which the Nawab's residence was to be built. Event-
ually, however, the scheme was set aside ; and in the
following year the Nawab acquired private property in
Chepauk, and engaged an English architect to build him
a house. Chepauk Palace thus came into existence. The
grounds of the Palace, which the Nawab surrounded with
a wall, formed an immense enclosure, which included a
large part of the grounds of Government House of to-
day and a great deal of adjoining land.
Chepauk Palace was the scene of some grand doings
in its time ; and soon after it was built the Nawab enter-
tained the Governor of Madras and his Councillors, one
of whom was Mr. Warren Hastings, at * an elegant
breakfast ; ' and, when the feast was over, he divided some
Rs. 30,000 among his guests. The Governor got Rs. 7,000,
and, on a sliding scale, the Secretaries, who were last on
the list, got Rs. 1,000 each.
The relations, however, between Nawab Walajah and a
later Governor of Madras were not so cordial. In 1780
Haidar Ali with an immense army suddenly invaded the
Carnatic, and annihilated a British force that was sent to
oppose him ; and Tipu, his son and successor, continued
the campaign. The Company's treasury at Madras was
straitened 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 eventually
defeated, the Nawab was induced to assign the control of
the revenues of the Carnatic to the Company. A few
5
66 THE STORY OF MADRAS
.months later the Nawab felt that he had made an unwise
bargain, and he declared his renunciation of the agree-
ment ; but Baron Macartney, the newly appointed Gover-
nor of Madras, kept him strictly to his word. The Nawab
wrote various official letters, complaining in one that Lord
Macartney had * premeditatedly ' offered him * Insults and
Indignity,' and in another that he had shown him * every
mark of Insult and Contempt.' The Directors in London,
expressly declaring their desire to content the influential
Nawab, decided in his favour ; whereupon Lord Macartney,
who in the opinion of his friends had been set at naught
for the sake of the wealthy potentate, indignantly resigned
the Governorship of -Madras, and went home. Friendly
relations between the Nawab and the Madras Government
were thereupon resumed, and when Nawab Walajah died,
at the age of seventy-eight, he was eulogised in an official
note in the Fori St. George Gazette.
The career of his son and successor, Umdat-ul-Umara,
was less auspicious. Although his accession was the occa-
sion of friendly letters between himself and the Govern-
ment of Madras, the Nawab's rejection. of the Governor's
suggestion that the financial arrangements between himself
and the Company should be made more favourable to the
Company irritated the Governor, and the Governor's
efforts to induce the Nawab to change his mind irritated
the Nawab. Meanwhile Tipu Sultan was preparing for
another war with the Company, and when, after a brief
campaign, Tipu was killed while fighting bravely in defence
of his capital, it was declared that an examination of Tipu's
correspondence showed that the Nawab of Arcot had been
guilty of treasonable communications with Mysore. It
was accordingly resolved that the Company should assume
control of the Carnatic ; but, as the Nawab was seriously
ill, nothing was done until his death, when British troops
were sent to occupy Chepauk Palace.
CHEPAUK PALACE 67
The Nawab's son refused to recognize the Company's
right to control his father's dominions, whereupon the
Company set him aside, and put his cousin on the throne
in his stead. The Company were now the actual rulers of
the Carnatic, and the future Nawabs were styled * Titular
Nawabs.' In 1855 the third of the Titular Nawabs died
without any son to succeed him. Lord Dalhousie was
Governor-General of India at the time, and it was Lord
Dalhousie's declared policy that if the ruler of any native
state died without issue, his dominions should formally
lapse to the Company. On this principle the Carnatic now
became a formal part of the British dominions, and the
dynasty of the Nawabs came to an end; Chepauk Palace,
which was the personal property of the Nawabs, was ac-
quired by the Company's Government for a price, and was
eventually turned into Government offices.
The many thousands of Mohammedans, however, who
dwelt in the crowded streets and lanes of Chepauk, and
who had looked upon the Nawab as their religious chief,
would have been afflicted at the cessation of the Carnatic
line ; and after the Indian Mutiny the Government of
India, respecting Mohammedan sentiment, recognized the
succession of the nearest relative of the late Nawab and
obtained for him from the King of England the hereditary
title of Amir-i-Arcot, or * Prince of Arcot ' — an honorary
title but higher than that of Nawab. A sum of Rs.
1,50,000 per annum — (not an excessive sum in relation to
the revenues of the Carnatic, which are now collected by
the Madras Government) — is expended annually in pen-
sions to the Prince and to certain of his relatives ; and he
lives in a house called the * Amir Mahal ' (the Amir's
Palace), which was given to him by the Government.
The Amir Mahal stands in spacious grounds in Royapettah.
At the I principal entrance, the gate-house is a tall and im-
posing edifice in red brick. At the gateway, sentries.
68 THE STORY OF MADRAS
armed with old-fashioned rifles, stand— or sometimes sit —
on guard ; and the Prince's Band is often to be heard
practising oriental music in the room up above.
Regarded in relation to its history, Chepauk is something
more than * one of the Government buildings on the
Marina.* Let us remember that, when it was enclosed
within the walls that are now no more, it was the home of
Mohammedan potent?.tes — sometimes a scene of gorgeous
festivity — sometimes a scene of desperate intrigue. In
imagination we may people the front garden with the gaily -
uniformed Bbdy-Guard of the Carnatic sovereign, mounted
on gaily-bridled steeds ; and we may see the Nawab hinv-
self coming magnificently down the front steps and climb-
ing into the silver howdah that is strapped on the back of
a kneeling elephant. A blast of oriental music, and the
procession goes on its way ; and we may wonder at which
of the tiled windows on the upper floor the bright eyes of
the Lalla Rookhs and the Nurmahals of Chepauk are
slily peeping at the spectacle. The vision vanishes. The
procession now is a procession of clerks to their homes
when their day's work is over ; and the music is a ragtime
selection by the Band of the Madras Guards on the Marina,
close by, with ayahs and children around. We are in the
twentieth century ; but for a moment we have lived In
the past.
CHAPTER XI
GOVERNMENT HOUSE
In the early days of Madras all the employees of the
Gompany, from the Governor down to the most junior
apprentice, lived in common. Their bedrooms were in
one and the same house, and they had their meals at one
and the same table. The house stood in the middle of the
Fort, and was the * Factory ' — a word which, as already
explained, was used in former times to mean a mercantile
office, or, as Annandale in his dictionary defines it, * an
establishment where factors in foreign countries reside to
transact business for their employers ; ' and the Factory
in Fort St. George was both an office and a home.
The community life, with the common table, was main-
tained for many years, but in course of time, when the
number of the employees had greatly increased and some
of the senior officials had wives and children, one man and
another were allowed to live in separate quarters, within
the precincts of the Fort ; and eventually the common
table, like King Arthur's, was dissolved. Even then,
however, and right on until the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, the junior employees had a common mess,
and were under something like disciplined control.
Like all the other buildings inside the Fort and within
the walls of White Town, the Factory — which was some-
times spoken of as * The Governor's House' — was without
a garden; and it was only to be expected that the resident
employees, most of whom were young men, should wish
for a recreation ground to which they could resort in their
leisure hours. Some of the wealthy private residents of
White Town had shown what could be done ; for they had
70 THE STORY OF MADRAS
acquired patches of land outside the walls, which they had
enclosed with hedges and cultivated as gardens, with a
house in the middle of each garden, in which, as either a
permanent or an occasional residence, the owner and his
family might hope to find relief from the stuffiness of the
streets of the rapidly developing city. In the * Records '
any such villa is spoken of as a * garden-house ' and even
now in Madras the term * garden-house ' is ocoasionally
used in Indo- English as signifying a house that stands
within its own ' compound, ' as distinct from houses that
open directly into the street.
The Company's agents in Madras realized the desirability
of laying out a garden for the recreative benefit of the
Company's employees. Outside the walls, therefore, of
White Town they hedged off" some eight acres of land in
the locality in which the Law College now stands, and they
cultivated it as a ' Company's Garden ; ' and within it they
built a small pavilion. We may imagine that in the cool
of the evening it was common for a goodly number of the
Company's mercantile employees to leave their apartments
in the Fort and stroll beyond the walls the short distance to
the Garden,' which in those early days was refresh-
ingly near the seashore. In our mind's eye we can blot
the Law College out of the landscape and can see a
party of youthful merchants engaged as energetically as
was suitable to the heat of Madras in the then fashionable
game of bowls — or, less energetically but much more exci-
tedly, gathered in a ring round two cocks that are tearing
each other to pieces — a particularly popular form of
'Sport' in old Madras; and, although the Directors in
London appropriately forbade to their employees the use
of cards or the dice-box, we can espy a tense-visaged
quartet within the shadow of the pavilion with a * pool ' of
fanams ' (coins worth about 2ld.) on the table, or
possibly, rupees or pagodas, absorbed in a round of ombre
GOVERNMENT HOUSE 71
or one of the other card games that were in fashion. The
sun has set, and the shadows are lengthening. A bugle
sounds from the Fort ; and the employees stroll back to
supper, which, according to an old account, invariably con-
sisted of ' milk, salt fish, and rice,' but which will be
privately supplemented afterwards with potations of arrack-
punch by those who can afford nothing better and with
draughts of sack or canary by those who can.
In the course of a few years the * Company's Garden '
was spoiled. Black Town had been springing: up close by ;
and, when a wall was built round old Black Town, the
Company's Garden was unpleasantly included therein, and
the Garden was now in the north-west corner of the Indian
city. Moreover, a part of the Garden had begun to be
utilized as a European burial-ground, and huge funeral
monstrosities of the bygone style had begun to domnate
the enclosure.
The Company's agents in Madras felt that a new recrea-
tion'%round was a necessity ; and they were agreed that
there ought to be not merely a * Company's Garden,' but
a * Company's Garden- House.' They wrote to the Direc-
tors saying that there were occasions on which the
Company in Madras had to entertain * the King (Golconda)
and persons of quality,' and that they had no building
that was suitable for any such ceremonial proceedings.
True there was the Council Chamber in the Fort, but
the Council Chamber was the place where the Company's
mercantile transactions were discussed ; and the Chamber,
as well as all the other buildings in the Fort, was closely
identified with the * Factory ; ' and the Company's chief
officials in Madras declared — not, we may suppose, with-
out regard for their own convenience — that a stately
* Garden House,' unassociated with ledgers and bills of
sale, ought to be built, in due accord with the stateliness of
the Company itself. Their application for permission to
72 THE STORY OF MADRAS
put the work in hand was met by the Directors in London
with the typically frugal reply that the work might be done
but care was to be taken that the Company should be put
to * no great charge.' Possibly the representatives in
Madras were able to provide additional supphes on the spot,
but, however that may have been, the house was * hand-
somely built,' yet ' with little expense to the Company.'
The new garden seems to have comprised the area with-
in which the Medical College and the General Hospital are
now situated. The grounds, which stretched down, even
as now, to the bank of the river, were well laid out, and
the Company's first * Garden House ' was a fine possession.
In 1686 Master William GyfFord, Governor of Fort St.
George, had a fancy for using the Garden House as a
private residence for himself. It is not to be wondered at
that he did so; for Master GyfFord, after twenty-seven years'
residence in Madras and more than twenty-seven years in
the East, was in poor health, and lately he had been taken
ill with a ' a violent fitt of the Stone and Wind Collick.'
The gardenless * Factory * in the Fort was a gloomy
apology for a * Governor's House,* and the crowd of
employees that were accommodated there must have been
a serious infliction upon the invalid Governor ; and he
found the Garden House an agreeable retreat. In his new
quarters he got better of his illness ; and he dwelt there a
considerable time, till in the following year he left Madras
for England for good. The story is interesting, for it
records the first occasion on which a Governor of Madras
lived in a separate house outside the Fort.
On various occasions the Company's * Garden House,'
with its extensive grounds, was used for public purposes,
justifying the plea for its construction. For example,
when the Company received the news of the accession of
King James II, the event was celebrated with brilliant
proceedings at the Garden House. Similarly, at the
GOVERNMENT HOUSE 73:
accession of Queen Anne * all Europeans of fashion in the
City ' were invited to the Garden House, where they
* drank the Queen's Health, and Prosperity to old
England.* In an earlier chapter we have related how a
young Nawab of Arcot who had just succeeded to his
murdered father's throne was entertained at the Garden
House with great doings. Governor Pitt made great
developments in the Gardens, and was another Governor
who liked the Garden House as a residence. An English-
man who was living in Madras in 1704, when Pitt was
Governor, has left an interesting account of the Garden
House as he saw it : —
* The Governor, during the hot Winds, retires to the Company's
new Garden for refreshment, which he has made a very delight-
ful Place of a barren one. Its costly Gates, lovely Bowling-
Green, spacious Walks, Teal-pond, and Curiosities preserved in
several Divisions are worthy to be Admired. Lemons and Grapes
grow there, but five Shillings worth of Water and attendance will
scarcely mature one of them.'
Before long it had come to be an unwritten regulation
that Governors at Fort St. George might reside at their
choice either in the Fort or at the Garden House. There
came a time, however, when the Governor had of necessity
to betake himself to the Fort ; it was the time when the
French were besieging Midras. During the siege the
enemy used the Garden House as a vantage-ground for their
big guns ; and afterwards, when they had captured Fort St.
George and were in occupation of the city, they pulled the
Garden House down, lest the English, trying perhaps to
recapture the Fort, should be able to use it as a vantage-
ground in their turn.
Thus, when Madras was restored to the EngUsh, the
Garden House had disappeared, and the only house for
Governor Saunders was the original residence in the
middle of the Fort. Governor Saunders, however, was
not content with the walled-in accommodation that the
74
THE STORY OF MADRAS
Fort provided and was unwilling to forgo the residential
privileges that his predecessors had enjoyed ; so a private
* garden-house ' in Cbepauk was rented in his behalf. It
belonged to a Mrs. Madeiros, a rich Portuguese widow,
whose husband, lately deceased, had been a leading
merchant in White Town.
Mrs. Madeiros's house was 'Government House, Madras,'
of the present day. The house, however, has been enlarged
MoyernmefU fious'., Mndrcus
GOVERNMENT HOUSE, MADRAS
and the grounds have been extended since Governor Saun-
ders lived there as a tenant.
Governor Saunders liked his residence, and, before he
had been there a year, the Company acquired it from the
widow, who had no use for it now that her husband was
dead ; and the Governor was careful to leave on record
the reason of the acquisition : —
' It having been always usual for the Company to allow the
President a house in the Country to retire to, and Mrs. Medeiros
being willing to dispose of her House, situated in the Road to
St. Thorax, for three thousand five hundred pagodas (say
Rs 12.250). Agreed That it be purchased accordingly. The
GOVERNMENT HOUSE Vs
Company's Garden-house having been demolished by the French
when they were in Possession of this Place, and Mrs. Medeiros's
being convenient for that Purpose, and on a Survey esteem'd
worth much more than the Sum 'tis offer'd at.'
The Company always enjoyed a good bargain, and
Governor Saunders was justified in thinking that he had
made a very good one in respect of the house ; for, a few
years later, the house, with certain extensions and improve-
ments, was written down in the Company's books at a
valuation of nearly four times the price that was paid
for it.
We have brought our story down to the acquisition of
Government House, but it remains to relate some of the
historic events in which Government House has figured
since it was acquired.
During the second siege of Madras by the French, under
Lally, the besiegers occupied the Garden House, and
during their occupation they did a great deal of wanton
damage before they ceased their vain endeavours. Two
years later, however, the English had the enjoyment of a
delicate revenge. They captured Pondicherry and brought
Lally to Madras, where they imprisoned him in the Garden
House till a vessel was available to take him to England*
The damage that he had done had not yet been repaired ;
and a contemporary Record says that ' Mr. Lally was lodged
in those apartments of the Garden House which had
escaped his fury at the Siege of Madras,' and that in re-
spect of his table he was allowed to give his own orders
' without limitation of expence,' with the result that he
seemed to have intended Revenge by Profusion.'
A few years later Tipu, Sultan of Mysore, at the head of
a body of horsemen, made a sudden raid on Madras ; and
the troopers scampered about the well-laid-out grounds of
the Garden House, looting the villages on either side.
According to accounts, Governor Bourchier and his
76 THE STORY OF MADRAS
Councillors were there when the raiders came, and they
would assuredly have been caught had they not managed to
make their escape in a boat that was conveniently tied up
on the bank of the Cooum river.
More than one Governor of Fort St. George has died at
Government House, and it was there that Governor Pigot
died in extraordinary circumstances. The tale has been
told in a previous chapter, that Lord Pigot was arrested by
his Councillors, with whom he had quarrelled, and that he
died in confinement in the Garden House.
The reader has yet to be told how the Garden House
was finally transformed into the Government House that
we see to-day.
In 1798 Lord Clive, son of the great Robert Clive, was
sent out to India as Governor of Madras. Within the first
six months of his arrival there was the excitement of a
war with Mysore, in which the terrible Tipu Sultan was
killed during the assault on his capital. During the tran-
quil remainder of his five years in India, Lord Clive turned
his attention to domestic reforms, and amongst them he
resolved that the Garden House should be improved. In
an official minute he wrote : —
' The garden house, at prese-t occupied by Myself, is so
insufl&cient either for tbs pnvate accommodation of my family
and Staff, or for the convenience of the public occasions insepara-
ble from my situation, that it is my intention to make such an
addition to it as may be calculated to answer both purposes.*
Lord Clive thereupon, in 180 1» developed Government
House at a cost of more than Rs. 3 lakhs ; and two years
later he built the beautiful Banqueting Hall, at a cost of
Rs. 2l lakhs. The recent fall of Tipu's capital of Seringa-
patam was an event that the Banqueting Hall could
appropriately commemorate; and Lord Clive, with pious
respect for his dead father's memory, coupled Plassey
with Seringapatam, and ordered that the fine figure-work
GOVERNMENT HOUSE 77
on the fa9ade of the hall should be a commemoration of
both victories. In England the Directors of the Company
complained of what they called * such wasteful extra-
vagance ; ' but the developments were a real want, and it
is a matter of present-day satisfaction that the Madras
Government have no need to be acquiring a site now and
to be building a new Government House in these expensive
days. Lord Ciive was certainly no miser with the Com-
pany's money, for he built also a second Government
House — a * country residence ' at Guindy. The * country
residence ' was developed and improved some forty years
later by Lord Elphinstone, who was Governor of Madras
in the middle of last century. It is a truly beautiful house,
standing in beautiful grounds ; and it has lately been a pro-
position that the house at Guindy should be the Governor's
only residence, and that Government House, Madras, should
be used for Government offices.
* Government House, Madras ! ' To most people it is
suggestive of dinner parties within and garden parties
without ; and the Banqueting Hall is suggestive of dances
and levees and meetings for good causes. But to people
who can look at Government House, Madras, with an
historic glance it rouses other memories. Within its
original walls more than two centuries ago a belaced
Senhor kept Portuguese state. It was here that French-
men were encamped while their guns were fruitlessly
hammering at the walls of Fort St. George. It was here
that Lally lived sumptuously in prison, till he was sent to
Europe- — eventually to be executed in Paris for having
failed to capture Madras. It was within these grounds
that Tipu's horsemen were scampering about on a Septem-
ber morning, looking for houses where money or jewels
could be commandeered. It was here that an ennobled
Governor of Madras lived in gilded captivity till death set
him free.
CHAPTER XII
MADRAS AND THE SEA
Madras is now a seaport of considerable repute ; but
it is interesting to recall the fact that less than forty years
ago the city was without a harbour, and that ships which
came there had to anchor out at sea. In the days of the
Company, passengers and cargo had to be landed on the
beach in boats ; and, as the waves that chase one another
to the shores of Madras are nearly always giant billows
crested with foaming surf, the passage between ship and
shore was not without its discomforts and also its risks.
Warren Hastings, when he was senior member of the
Madras Council and was in charge of Public Works, wrote
it down thit he thoaght it * possible to carry out a causeway
or pier into the sea beyond the Surf, to which boats might
come and land their goods or passengers, without being
exposed to the Surf.' At various times different engineers
devised plans for such a pier as Warren Hastings propos-
ed, but nothing was actually done, and it was not until the
sixties of last century that a pier was actually made. It
was not a stone causeway such as Hastings seems to have
had in his mind, but was a lighter and likelier structure of
wood and iron ; and it did excellent work, making it easy
for passengers and cargo to be landed in fair weather.
Midras was still, however, without a harbour ; but before
many years a harbour was taken in hand, and in the
summer of 1881 its two arms, enclosing the small pier,
were practically finished. There was much rejoicing ; but
the congratulations were short-lived, for on a certain night
during the winter of the same year there was a cyclone off
Madras, and the next morning the citizens saw that their
MADRAS AND THE SEA 79
harbour had been wrecked by the devastating waves. It
was fifteen years before the harbour had been restored,
upon an improved plan ; and even then it was a poor apo-
logy for a haven ; for when a storm was expected, ships
were warned to put out to sea, as the cyclone had shown
that a stormy sea was less dangerous than the storm-beaten
harbour. Within recent years, however, the harbour has
been so much altered and strengthened and developed that
it is regarded as a splendid piece of engineering, and ship-
ping business in Madras has benefited greatly. Large
vessels can now lie up against wharves, to discharge or to
load their cargo, and passengers can embark and disembark
in comfort, and the increase in trade has been great.
Much watchfulness, however, is still very necessary ; for,
on an exciting night a few years ago, part of the extended
harbour-wall was washed away by a storm.
Yes, Madras is an important seaport ; yet it is a fact
that, except to men whose business is with the sea, Madras
is much l5ss like a seaside town than it was in its earher
years, and many of the people who live there seldom see
the briny ocean — even though they may sometimes be
reminded of its nearness when in the stillness of the night
they hear
* The league-long breakers thundering on the shore.'
For one thing, the greater part of Madras is not so near
the sea as it was in former times ; for the southern
wall of the harbour has acted as a breakwater, causing
the sea to recede a very long way from the original shore ;
and houses in the thoroughfare that is still called ' Beach
Road ' are now a very long way from the beach, and it is
only from upper stories that the sea in the distance is visible.
Southward, moreover, the magnificent road that is still
called the * Marina ' is fast losing its right to the name ; for
it is only across a broad stretch of ever-extending dry sand
that the dark blue ribbon of tropical sea is beheld therefrom.
80
THE STORY OF MADRAS
In earlier days Madras was verily a city of the sea.
Both White Town and Black Town lay directly along the
sea-beach, and the coming and going of the Company's
ships were momentous events. Surf-boats used to land on
the beach outside the * Sea-Gate ' of the wave-splashed
Fort, laden with cargo from the Company's ships lying
out in the roads ; and the bales were carried through the
THE SEA GATE.
Oke sea* kous tiojv receded cJiar.
gateway into the Company's warehouses within the Fort-
walls. The Sea-Gate is still to be seen, and it still looks
towards the sea ; but the sea is far away, and the Sea- Gate
is now one of the least used of the entrances to the Fort.
In former times the Company had a considerable fleet of
first-class sailing-ships, and, owing to the frequency of wars
with either the French or the Dutch, the Company
MADRAS AND THE SEA 81
obtained royal permission to equip their ships as men-of-
war armed with serviceable guns, which could be turned
against an enemy if occasion required. The voyage from
England to India was by way of the Cape of Good Hope,
and it lasted at least three or four months, and often very
much more. For e xample, when Robert Clive came out
to India for the first time, the vessel was so buffeted by
contrary winds that the commander thought it best to run
across the Atlaatic and let her lie up so long in a South
American port that Clive learned to speak Spanish with
considerable fluency ; and it was not till nearly a year after
leaving England that the young writer arrived at Madras.
Furthermore, besides the various adventures that were
natural to a sea-voyage, there was the contingency of a sea-
fight, and the possibility of being taken to Pondicherry or
Batavia as a prisoner of war instead of being landed at
Madras as a paid employee of the ' Honourable Company.*
It was usual for several ships to sail together, for mutual
protection ; and passengers had reason to congratulate
themselves when they were eventually landed safe and
sound at Madras. It can be readily imagined that the
sight of a vessel of the Company approaching in the dis-
tance caused a stir of excitement amongst the residents of
Fort St. George. There were no telegraphs from other
ports to give previous notice of a vessel's
prospective arrival ; and the fact that
a ship was at hand was unknown until
her flag ^ or her particular rig was
discerned in the distance, or until one
of her guns gave notice of her
approach. The comparative regularity,
however, of the winds in Eastern ssas wi cowp'ANt'* PtA<j.
caused seasons ' in which vessels might be expected ; and
^ ' The flag displayed by the Company's ships bore seven horizon-
tal red stripes on a white ground, with a St. George's Cross in the
inner top corner.' — Love.
6
THE STORY OF MADRAS
when a season arrived, the look-out who happend to be on
duty on the Fort flagstaff must have been particularly alert.
Ay, and there must have been much hurrying to and fro
in the streets of White Town when the signal had been
given and the news had spread that the sails of a Company's
ship had been sighted, and while the vessel, perhaps with
several consorts, came nearer and nearer, till at last the
anchors were dropped and salutes were exchanged between
ship and shore.
There was good cause for excitement. The ship brought
letters from home — perhaps after several months of no
news at all. There were the private letters that told the
news about near ones and dear ones ; there were the
official letters that decreed appointments in the Company's
service and promotions and penalties, and dealt with the
Company's business ; and there were the * news-letters ' —
the old-fashioned predecessors of the modern newspaper,
which were written by paid correspondents, whose duty it
was to give their clients news of London and of England
and of Europe. The news was often astounding, and
was sometimes extraordinarily behind-time. For example,
the Company's employees in India were still professing
loyalty to the Most High and Mighty King James II nearly
a twelvemonth after that monarch had fled to France and
had been succeeded by William and Mary ; and the
employees at Madras were surprised indeed when a ship
arrived one day from England with the belated news.
The salutes have been fired, and the vessel has been
surrounded by a flotilla of surf-boats and catamarans.
The commander and the passengers are being rowed ashore,
and the Governor with his Councillors, dressed all of them
in -their smartest official attire, are waiting on the beach out-
side the Sea-Gate of the Fort to bid them a hearty welcome.
Amongst the passengers there are probably some youths
who have been posted to Madras either as apprenticed
MADRAS AND THE SEA
85
'.writers ' or as military Cadets ; and perhaps there is
a senior employee who is returning to India after the rare
event of a holiday in England. Possibly too there are
some ladies, either wives of employees who have been
willing to accompany or to follow their husbands to the
mysterious East — or, as was not infrequently the case
SURF-BOAT
young ladies who, with the consent of the Directors, have
been shipped out to India by their parents or guardians or
on their own account, in the hope that companionable
bachelor employees, pining in their loneliness, will jump at
the chance of matrimony.
The surf-boat comes nearer and nearer ; and when it
gets among the breakers there are feminine screams of
terror. The alarm is not without cause ; for at one moment
the boat is being balanced on the top of a heaving wave,
and the next it is almost lost to sight in a foaming hollow.
84 THE STORY OF MADRAS
The excitement in the tossing boat is tremendous ; but it is
brief; for there are only three or four breakers to be-
negotiated, and in less than a minute a curling wave has^-
caught the boat in its clutch and hurls it with a thud into
the shallows. Naked coolies rush forward and lay hold of
its sides, lest the backwash should carry it seaward again ;:
and, with the help of the next wave, they manage to haul
the boat a little further on shore, and the passengers are
able to disembark — splashed, perhaps, but safe and sounds-
When the greetings are over, the Governor leads the way
into the Fort, where a general meal is served and the news^
is told and the exclamations of surprise are many. In the
evening there is a banquet, and after the banquet, * when
the gentlemen have finished their wine,' and have rejoined
the ladies, the stately dances of the period are 'performed ; '
and it is not unlikely that before the assembly breaks up^
some, if not all, of the newly-arrived young ladies have
received and have accepted offers of matrimony ; and it is
possible that two or more gallants have had a serious
quarrel about this young lady or that, and even possible
that, out of the Governor's sight, swords have been drawn
in her regard.
On the morrow the unloading begins ; and for many days
a fleet of surf -boats is busily engaged in bringing ashore
the broadcloths and other English wares which the Com-
pany will be able to sell at a large profit — not forgetting the
barrels of canary and madeira and other luxuries that have
been imported both for private consumption and also for the
general table in the Fort. And when the unloading is over
and the ship has been overhauled after her long voyage,,
the surf -boats will then be engaged in carrying to the ship
the calicoes and other Indian wares that are to be exported
to England for the Company's profit there.
The sea-trade of Madras is very much greater now than
it was in the days of old. Not a day now passes but at
MADRAS AND THE SEA 85
least one steamship glides into the Madras Harbour, and it
is always a much larger vessel than was the very largest of
the sailing-ships that in those bygone times tacked
laboriously to an anchorage in the Madras roads. But the
excitement has disappeared. The steamers come and go
with as little stir — or not so much — as when a tramcar
leaves a crowded street-corner.
In Madras there are still some reminders of the times
when nautical afifairs were in more general evidence in
Madras than they are now. For example, the ' Naval
Hospital Road ' is still the name of a thoroughfare which
leads from the Poonamallee Road, opposite the School of
Arts, to Vepery, and it is a reminder of the fact that there
were once upon a time sufficient naval men in Madras to
make a hospital for sick seamen a necessity. The buildings
of the old Naval Hospital still exist ; they are the buildings
in the Poonamallee Road opposite the School of Arts. In
the early part of last century the Naval Hospital itself was
abolished, and the buildings were converted into a Gun
Carriage Factory ' — and this is now no more. It is a good
iHany years indeed since the Gun Carriage Factory was
•closed down ; and in Madras at this particular time, when
there is a very pressing demand for house accommodation,
many people wonder that such spacious premises in so busy
a quarter of the city should have been lying idle for so long
and are hoping to see them once more serving some useful
purpose.
Another reminder of the nautical conditions of those days
is to be found in the existence of an ' Admiralty House.*
* Admiralty House ' is a fine residence in San Thome, and
is now the property of the Raja of Vizianagram. It was
apparently the San Thome residence of the Admiral of the
East Indian fleet. That official had another residence
within the Fort, which used also to be called * Admiralty
House' — the house which Robert Clive occupied at the
86 THE STORY OF MADRAS
time of his marriage, and which is now the Accountajit-
General's office. . ■ , ,,,
We will glance at one more reminder of the nautiqai
Madras of by-gon3 times. At Royapuram there is a largo
house which is now styled ' Biden House,* and is used as
a harbour-masters' residence, but which until a few years
ago was called * The Biden Home ' or ' The Sailors*
Home.' It is not an ancient building, but it was never-
theless built in the days of the sailing-ship, and is a
reminder of the times when sailing-ships used to lie out
in the Madras Roads and the ' Sailors' Home ' offered
seamen entertainment more physically and morally whole-
some than that which was provided in the low-class hotels
and saloons which laid themselves out for the spoliation of
Jack ashore — and of the time when the wreck of a sailing-
ship on the Coromandel coast was not an uncommoriJ
occurrence and parties of distressed seamen were not
infrequently to be seen in Madras, for whom a temporary^
Home ' had to be provided. The ' Old Salt ' — the
picturesque sea-dog of sailing-ship days — has disappeared
except from story-books — the old-fashioned seaman with
earrings in his ears and a villainous * quid ' in his mouth,,
dressed in a blue jersey and the baggiest of blue trowsers,
and lurching as he walked, always ' full of strange oaths '^
and larding his speech with nautical jargon. On shore,,,
after a long sea-voyage, and with money in his pockets,,
the ' Old Salt ' in an Eastern port was not always a factor
for peace and progress. He was not uncommonly too-
frequent a visitor at what the Madras Records call the-
* punch houses,' and the Records show that he often caused
a disturbance. But he was a brave fellow, and at sea he-
did much for England's trade and for England's greatness..
In an Indian seaport he was a picturesque, if troublesome^
personage, and nautical Madras has changed with the Old
Salt's disappearance. , .1
CHAPTER XIII
THE STORY OF THE SCHOOLS
A tourist who goes the round of Madras must surely be
impressed with the numerous signs of its educational
activity. Apart from the multitude of juvenile schools in
every part of the crowded city, the number of academic
institutions is large, and educational buildings are amongst
the most prominent of its edifices. Our tourist, putting
himself in charge of a guide at the Central Station for a
drive along the beautiful Marina, sees a number of
academic buildings on his way. The Medical College is
just outside the station yard. The classic fa9ade of
Pachaiyappa's College for Hindus peeps at him gracefully
across the Esplanade. The Law College lifts its Saracenic
towers above him as he passes by. Across the road he
sees the collection of miniature domes and spires and
towers that surmount the various buildings that make up the
far-famed Christian College. Driving along the Marina
he sees the Senate House of the Madras University sur-
mounted by its four squat towers ; farther on he sees the
staid Engineering College, and the still staider Presi-
dency College, and, beyond, the whitewashed buildings of
Queen Mary's residential College for Women ; and on his
way back by the Mount Road he sees the Muhammedan
College, with its little white mosque and its spacious
playing-fields in the heart of the city. There are yet more
colleges in Madras ; and there are also numerous large
schools, some of which are attended by more than a thousand
pupils.
Yes, the educational activity in Madras is great ; and it
is interesting to reflect that it is a development from very
88 THE STORY OF MADRAS
small educational enterprises in the days when Madras was
young.
The initial enterprise was small indeed. The first school
in Madras was the little " public school for children,
several of whom are English ", which the French Capuchin
priest, Father Ephraim, opened in his own house in White
Town very soon after Madras came into being. His pupils
were mostly Portuguese or Portuguese Eurasians, the
children of Portuguese subjects who had come from Myla-
pore and who, for purposes of trade or commerce, had
settled down within the English Company's domain. His
English pupils must have been children of the very few of
the Company's civil or military employees that were married,
or of the still fewer English free settlers. Father Ephraim,
who according to accounts was a really learned man,
charged no fees, yet was deeply interested in the welfare of
his scholars ; and the little school must have supplied a
great want in those far-oflf days. It is interesting indeed
to think of that little ' public school;' for the room in the
priest's house was the scene of the very first beginning of
what are now the mighty educational activities of Madras —
an earnest, moreover, of the great things that the Roman
Catholic Church was going to do in the way of education,
both for boys and for girls, in South India.
Father Ephraim's school continued to prosper under his
successors, and in the seventeenth century it was transferred,
as a poor-school, to a building in the grounds of what is now
the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Armenian Street ; and in
1875 it was put under the control of the brothers of St.
Patrick, an Irish order of educational monks, and it became
St. Patrick's orphanage. Later the brothers transferred
themselves and their orphanage to the spacious park —
Elphinstone Park — on the southern bank of the Adyar
River, the premises which they occupy still.
For some thirty years the Company took no part in
THE STORY OF THE SCHOOLS 89
educational work, and the children of Madras were left
entirely to Father Ephraim's care. Then for two years
a certain Master Patrick Warner was the Company's
temporary chaplain of Madras — a conscientious and un-
compromising Protestant minister who wrote some long
letters to the Directors in England denouncing the laxity of
the conduct of the Company's employees and deploring the
influence that Roman Catholic priests had been allowed
to obtain in Fort St. George. Finally, he went back to
England, with the threat that he was going to interview
the Directors on various matters pertaining to Madras ; and
that he succeeded in making himself heard is to be seen in
the fact that in the following year the Directors sent a
Protestant schoolmaster out to Madras. The letter in
which they notified the appointment to the Governor in
Council at Fort St. George was assuredly inspired by
Master Patrick Warner's undoubtedly high-minded re-
presentations. They wrote that, as there were now in Fort
St. George ' so many married families,' they were sending
out * one Mr. Ralph Orde to be schoolmaster at the Fort
... who is to teach all the Children'to read English and to
^ write and Cypher gratis, and if any of the other Natives,
* as Portuguez, Gentues (Telugus),^ or others will send their
* Children to School, we require they be also taught gratis
*. . . and he is likewise to instruct them in the Principles of
* the Protestant religion.* Mr. Ralph Orde arrived by the
same ship which brought the letter, and his arrival (1677) is
another notable event in the history of education in Madras.
It was the first beginning of Government education — the
laying of the first stone in what is now such a vast edifice.
In appointing a schoolmaster, the Directors meant to do
their best for education in their rising city ; for they had
1 In modern Madras the great majority of the Hindu residents are
Tamils ; but in the beginning there were very few Tamil immigrants,
and the Hindu residents were nearly all of them Telugus (Gentoos).
90 THE STORY OF MADRAS
engaged no mean dominie on a menial's pay. In choosing
Mr. Ralph Orde they chose a good man, and they paid him
accordingly. He was to dine at the General Table, and
his salary was to be ^50 a year, which in those days was
no small sum — more than the salary of some of the Members
of Council. Perhaps, indeed, they got too good a man for
the post ; for after five years of educational work in Madras,
Mr. Orde complained that his schoolmastering had been
* much prejudicial to my health,' and he asked to be relie-
ved of his duties and to be appointed to a post in the Com-
pany's civil service instead. His request was granted.
A new schoolmaster was appointed ; and as a Civilian '
Mr. Orde worked with such success that in two or three
years he was sent to Sumatra to be the Chief of a factory
that he was to found on the west coast of the island. The
ex-schoolmaster would, perhaps, have risen to be Governor
of Madras, but it would seem that life in the East had
really been ' much prejudicial to his health,' for he died
in Sumatra ten years after his first arrival in Madras.
In 1688, by virtue of the Company's Royal Charter, a
Corporation of the City of Madras came into being, and it
was among their delegated duties that they should build a
school in Black Town for the purpose of teaching ' Native
children to speak, read, and write the English Tongue,,
and to understand Arithmetic and Merchants' Accompts.'
Three years later, however, Elihu Yale, Governor of
Madras, complained to the Corporation that, although they
had been empowered to levy taxes on the citizens, they
had not so much as thought about building a school, and
had neglected various other civic responsibilities. The
Company— rightly or wrongly — sought to justify their inac-
tion with the excuse which the Corporation of Madras has
rightly or wrongly — made for civic inaction so many times
since, namely that 'ho funds' had been assigned to them
by Government for the works that they were called upon
THE STORY OF THE SCHOOLS 91
to undertake. As for taxation, they remarked that the
people in Black Town had not been schooled to civic tax-
ation ; and it is true that any ruthless collection of taxe^
might have meant wholesale departures from the city, ori
at any rate a serious check to further immigration. So the
municipal school for Native children never came into
being.
Meanwhile the Company's free school in White Town,,
started by Mr. Orde, continued its work under Mr. Orde's
successors ; and elementary instruction was imparted therein
to a heterogeneous crowd of children — English, Eurasians,.
and Indians — Christians and Hindus. Eventually the
school was put in charge of the chaplain of St. Mary's
Church in the Fort, and the chaplain and his churchwar-
dens agreed in thinking that such education was not of the
kind that a Church should control, and that it was rather
their duty to institute in Madras a residential free-school
for poor Protestant children of British descent, which
should be conducted on the lines of the many ' charity
schools' in England; and in 1715, with the approval of
the Directors, * St. Mary's Church Charity School ' was
founded. The event is of particular interest ; for St.
Mary's Church Charity School developed later into the^
Male Asylum ' — the institution which has done so much for
boys and girls for so many years, and which, after changing
its habitation on various occasions, is now comfortably
housed in spacious premises in the Poonamallee road.
The year 1715 is noteworthy on another account. St.-
Mary's School having been founded solely for the benefit
of children of European descent, the native children who
had attended the Company's day-school were deprived of
education. The Society for the Promotion of Christian
Knowledge undertook to supply the want, by establishing^
schools in Madras for the special benefit of Indian children >
and the year 1715, therefore, is the date which marks the
92 THE STORY OF MADRAS
first beginning of the educational work that English Protes-
ant missionary societies have done in India. The Society
found themselves unable to take up the work immediately
themselves ; so they applied to the vigorous Danish Luth-
eran Mission at Tranquebar, which was then a Danish
settlement ; and a Danish minister was sent to Madras to
set things going.
In the course of time Madras had become a much more
habitable city than it had been in its first beginnings, and
a much more possible place of residence for European
women. The Company's employees, therefore, were more
.and more disposed to matrimony ; and, as already related,
the Directors, believing that married men made steadier
-employees, had from early times encouraged the nuptial
humour by sending out from England periodical batches of
well-connected young women as prospective brides for
•employees who lacked either the means or the inclination
to take a trip home to choose partners for themselves.
The number of European fathers and mothers, therefore, in
Madras was continually increasing ; and for the education
■of their children, a^, also for that of children of well-to-do
Eurasians, there was need of a different kind of education
than the various free-schools supplied. Home education,
with or without paid tutors and governesses, probably served
its turn with some, but it was certain that sooner or later
.the private school would come into being.
We are unable to say when the first private school in
Madras was started ; but an advertisement in one of the
issues of the Madras Courier, in 1790, shows that a private
school for boys was started in that year ; and it was probably
the first. The enterprising educationist was Mr. John
Holmes, M.A., who opened the * Madras Academy ' in Black
Town for the instruction of boys in * Reading, Writing,
Arithmetic, History, the use of the Globes, French, Greek,
and Latin.' Other towns in the Madras Presidency had
THE STORY OF THE SCHOOLS 93
their English residents, so Mr. Holmes offered to accom-
modate ' a few Boarders ; ' and the offer was found so conve-
nient that certain parents wanted accommodation for their
girls as well as for their boys. Mr. Holmes was willing
to receive all the pupils that he could get ; for in an adver-
tisement two months later he announced that he was going
to move to a larger house in which * apartments will be
allotted for the Young Ladies entirely removed and sepa-
rate from the Young Gentlemen.'
The Madras Academy was eminently successful ; but
the mixed boarding school was not its most commendable
side ; and in the following year an enterprising lady-educa-
tionist announced that she was opening in Black Town a
* Female Boarding School,' in which her young ladies
would be * genteelly boarded, tenderly treated, carefully-
Educated, and the most strict attention paid to their
Morals,' and the school was to be conducted as far as
possible * in the manner most approv'd of in England/
The enterprising lady-educationist was a Mrs. Murray, who
had been a mistress in the Female Asylum. Her syllabus
of education was of a more feminine sort than that which
was followed at the Madras Academy ; for, as announced
in the prospectus, it included ' Reading and Writing, the
English language and Arithmetic ; Music, French, Drawing
and Dancing ; with Lace, Tambour, and Embroidery, all
sorts of Plain and Flowered needle-work.' The two syllabu-
ses are interesting reminders as to what were the usual
subjects of education for European boys and girls a century
and a half ago.
Schools, therefore, were available for children of every
class — European and Indian, rich and poor ; but the schools
for Indians, conducted either by missionaries or by indi-
genous teachers, were of an elementary kind ; and, apart
from Oriental studies in indigenous institutions, there was
little or nothing in the way of higher education for
94 THE STORY OF MADRAS
Indians either in Madras or anywhere else in India. This
condition was altered, however, during the governorship of
Lord WilHam Bentinck, the magnanimous if not brilliant
governor-general whose term of office lasted for seven
years, from 1828 to 1835.
During this period everything favoured educational
progress in India. There was peace in England and there
was peace in India. It was a time of great educational
developments in England, as is manifested by the fact that
within this period the London University and Durham
University were opened, and the great British Association
for the Advancement of Science was established. Such
•conditions in England had their influence in India, and the
more so because Lord William Bentinck was ardent for
progress. The opening of the Madras Medical College
in 1835 was one of the signs of the times. During Lord
William Bentinck's term of office education in India was
reformed. Macaulay, afterwards Lord Macaulay, was an
Indian official at the time, and he penned a notable report
on education in India, in which he belittled vernacular
learning and asserted that the Government of India would
do well to discountenance it altogether, and to introduce
western learning and the study of English literature into
all schools under Government control, and to make it a
rule that the English language was to be the only medium
of instruction. Whether or not Macaulay's views were
correct, they were adopted by the Government of India,
and Lord William Bentinck issued in 1835 a resolution
in accordance therewith, in which he sought to secure the
people's acceptance of English education for their children
by notifying that a knowledge of English would in future
be necessary for admission into Government service.
Government service is particularly coveted in India, and
the resolution encouraged the foundation of schools of a
good class in which special attention would be given to the
THE STORY OF THE SCHOOLS 95
study of the English language ; and within a few years a
number of important educational institutions had been
founded in different parts of India.
In South India the Madras Christian College, called
originally ' The General Assembly's Institution,' was first
in the field. It was founded in 1837, by the Rev. John
Anderson, the first missionary that the Church of Scotland
sent out to Madras. The name of the founder is preserved
'in the ' Anderson Hall ' in one of the college buildings ;
but the remarkable progress of the institution has been
very specially due to the untiring energy of the Rev. Dr.
^Miller, whose statue stands on the opposite side of the
public road. Dr. Miller was Principal for a number of
years, and now (1921) at a great age the venerable
•educationist is living in retirement in Scotland.
In 1839, two years after the foundation of the Christian
College, the Roman Catholic Bishop in Madras, Dr. Carew,
founded St. Mary's Seminary, which after forty-five years
became St. Mary's College, and which is now represented
by St. Mary's High School for Europeans and St. Gabriel's
High School for Indians.
Two years later, in 1841, the Presidency College had its
beginning, in a rented room in Egmore. At its foundation
it was not a Government institution, but was a public
school under the control of governors, who were chosen
from among the leading Europeans and Indians in Madras,
with the Advocate-General as their first president. It was
styled * The High School of the Madras University,' and it
was the founders' intention that when a college department
had been added, the institution should be called the
Madras University,' and should apply for a charter. In
the sixties, however, the Madras Government was consi-
dering a scheme of its own for a University of Madras,
whereupon the governors of the ' University High School'
transferred their school to the Government, who called it
96
THE STORY OF MADRAS
the * Presidency College.' The Presidency College conti-
nued to work in the rented building until 1870, when the
building that it now occupies was publicly opened by the
Duke of Edinburgh.
Pachaiyappa's College, a well-known Hindu institution,,
had its first beginning in 1842. Like the other colleges in
Madras, it began as a school ; the school was called
UNjVei^sitV serl/\TE House..
UNIVERSITY SENATE HOUSE
* Pachaiyappa's Central Institution,' and was located in
Black Town. The present buildings were opened in 1850
by Sir Henry Pottinger, an ex-governor of Madras, amid
a large gathering of leading European and Indian residents ;
and for a number of years the annual ' Day' at Pachaiyap-
pa's College was an important social event. Pachaiyappa
was a rich and religious Hindu, who made his money as a
broker in the Company's service, and who died more than
a hundred years ago leaving a lakh of pagodas — some 3 J
lakhs of rupees— for temple purposes. The trustees neg-
lected the provisinns of the will, whereupon the High Court
THE STORY OF THE SCHOOLS
97
-assumed control of the funds, which under the Court's con-
trol rose to the value of nearly Rs. 7^ lakhs. The original
amount was set apart for the fulfilment of the terms of the
PACHAIYAPPA'5 COLLEGE,
will, and the surplus was assigned to educational purposes
in Pachaiyappa's-^ame.
The education of girls shared in the development ; for
in 1842 the hrst party of Nuns of the Presentation Order
was brought out from Ireland, and a convent, with a board-
ing school and an orphanage, — the ' Georgetown Convent*
7
98
THE STORY OF MADRAS
of to-day — was established in Black Town. The ' \ epery
Convent School ' and some of the other successful convent
schools in Madras are controlled by nuns of the same-
Order.
E'.ducation in India was given further impetus in the|
time of Lord Dalhousie. During his term of office (1848-'
1856) the present system of education, under a Director of!
Public Instruction, was introduced, and Government was
. DOVETON PKOTESTANT COLLEGE
empowered to make liberal educational grants, and to
establish universities. The despatch in which the
educational developments were announced has been called ■
' the intellectual charter of India.' '; i
Various institutions in Madras are representative of this
later de^'elppnient. A Government ' Norrnal School;—,
which has grown into the ' Teach ers^jCoWege Tof, tQ.^tJay—t-
was established in 1856, to increase the number and the
efficiency of indigenous teachers ; and the Madras Urviyer-
sity was incorporated in 1857, for the, control and tb.et
development of higher education. Qf. J^^-l^g^ higli Sfhoqls.
THE STORY OF THE SCHOOLS 99
still existing, the Harris High School in Royapettah was
founded by the Church Missionary Society in 1856, for the
education of Mohammedan boys, and was named after
Lord Harris, who was Governor of Madras at the time ;
and the Hindu High School, in Triplicane, was founded in
1857. Doveton College, Vepery, for Anglo-Indian boys
was opened in 1855. It owes its existence to a wealthy
Eurasian, Captain John Doveton, who obtained his Captain-
cy in the service of the Nizam of Hyderabad, and wha
left a large sum of money to an earlier institution, the
Parental Academy, which was afterwards called Doveton
College in the deceased officer's honour. Within later
years philanthropic and enterprising Indians have done
much for education, and numerous schools both for boys
and for girls have been established by their efforts.
An educational building of curious interest is the office
of the Director of Public Instruction, in Nungumbaukam,
It is commonly known as the 'Old College'. In the
masonry of a large arch at the entrance, as well as on
another arch within, quaint designs have been introduced —
mysterious faces, and flags, and strange geometrical figures.
The house was the property of a wealthy Armenian
merchant named Moorat, who died more than a hundred
years ago ; and it may be supposed that the quaint designs
were after the nature of family memorials. In the early
part of last century the Armenian merchant's son sold the
building to Government, who used it as a ' College for
Junior Civilians.' Hence the designation ' Old College ' ;
but the name does not mean that it was a building in which
young civilians were trained, but means that it was a
building in which there were * colleagues ' in residence, or,
in other words, that, the ' General Table ' having been dis-
solved, the ' College ' Avas a mess-house for junior civilians.
Later, its large hall was for many years a recognized
assembly-room for amateur concerts, amateur dramatic
100 THE STORY OF MADRAS
entertainments, and other occasions of social reunion.
The quaint devices on the gates are still preserved, and
the name of the old ' College ' still survives ; but the
associations have gone. Not even as a ghost does the long-
robed Armenian merchant tread the floors ; the junior
civilians, with their ancient pranks and their antiquated
jests, have departed ; in the great hall the lilt of the song
and the frenzy of the fiddles for the dance and the amateur
mouthings of the drama are heard no more. A multitude
of turbanned clerks are pouring forth the blue-black ink
from their pens ; schoolmasters haunt the portals to press
their claims for educational grants for their own particular
schools ; and the click of a chorus of typewriters is the
only music that is borne upon the breeze.
I have told the story of the schools. It is creditable to
Madras ; for great things have been done since that first
little ' public school * was opened in the Fort.
CHAPTER XIV
HERE AND THERE
Before closing the story of Madras, it will be well to
spsak, at least very briefly, of some of the prominent land-
marks of the city that we have not yet described.
Of churches, we should mention St. George's Cathedral-.
It was opened in 1816, not as a cathedral but as an ordinary
church ; for Madras then was not a diocese by itself, but
was a part of the immense diocese of Calcutta. The new-
church was regarded as a necessity ; for a great many
* garden houses ' had sprung up in and about the Mount
Road, in the area that was called the ' Choultry Plain,' and
the Directors of the Company agreed w^itli representations
from Madras that it was undesirable that English residents
within the bounds should be able to stay away from the
Church-services on Sunday with the reasonable excuse
that the nearest Anglican church — St. Mary's in the Fort —
was too far away from their houses for them to be expect-
ed to attend. So the new church was built ; and some
twenty years later, when Dr. Corrie, Archdeacon of
Calcutta, was consecrated first Bishop of Madras, the
church became ' the Cathedral Church of St. George.' St.
George's Cathedral is a stately building, with a spire 139
feet high, and it stands in spacious grounds. The total
cost was more than two lakhs of rupees ; but nobody had
to be asked to subscribe, for the money was available from
a peculiar source. It was an age in which State lotteries
were in vogue ; Madras had followed the fashion with a
series of official lotteries, and a ' Lottery Fund * had been
created from the profits, so that there was always a good
102
Tl^I'E SWORV OF MADRAS
supply of cash available for extraordinary expenses,
such as mending the roads or entertaining distinguished
visitors. It was from the Lottery Fund that the cost of
building St. George's was met.
St. Andrew's Church— ^most commonly known as
The Kirk ' — was planned while St. George's was
being built ; and it is remarkable that it was not projected
3T G£0RC£»6 CATHEDRAL.
sooner than it was. Scotchmen in Madras, as in other
parts of India, apart from Scottish soldiers, have been
many ; and the names of a number of Madras roads and
houses — such as Anderson Road, Graeme's Road, David-
son Street, Brodie Castle, Leith Castle, • Mackay's
Gardens — are reminders of the fact that not a few of
the Scots of Madras have been influential ; and at the time
when a second Anglican church was being built in the city
it was suggested to the Directors of the Company in
HERE AND THERE^
103
England that the numerous residents who were members of
the Church of Scotland ought to have a church too. The
Directors, who realized no doubt the desirability of being
agreeable to the many Scots in Madras, one of whom at
the time was the Governor himself, Mr. Hugh Elliot, con-
sented to the suggestion, and in 1815 they sent out a notifi-
cation that a Presbyterian church was to be built not only
ST. ANDREW'S (THE"KIRK."}.
;at Madras but also in each of the other Presidency cities
at the Company's expense, and that the Company would
maintain a Presbyterian chaplain at each. The Directors
laid down no instructions as to what was to be the maxi-
muin cost of each kirk, but it was unpretentious buildings
that .they had in mind. At Bombay a large kirk was built
for less than half a lakh of rupees, but for the kirk at
Madras the Madras Government submitted a bill for
104 TN$SWRY. OF MADRAS
nearly Rs. 2j lakhs — some Rs. 10,000 more than the total
cost of St. George's Cathedral, and the Directors were-
indignant. The Kirk, however, had been built ; and it is
one of the handsome churches of Madras^ It is a domed
building, with a tall steeple over the Grecian facade ; and
some of its critics have said that the combination of dome
and steeple gives the edifice a strangely camel-backed
appearance ; but, however that may be, the dome adds
beauty to the interior. When the Church was opened,,
it was found that the dome evoked disturbing echoes, and,
a large additional expense had to be incurred to exorcise
the wandering voices. The steeple reaches a height
of 166.] feet, which is 27^ feet higher than that of
St. George's.
The Roman Catholic Cathedral at Mylapore has been
described on page 61. A sketch of the handsome building.
is given on the next page.
The High Court, a red Saracenic structure that spreads
itself out over a large area between Georgetown and the
Fort, is a modern building. It was opened within the
memory of elderly lawyers of Madras, some of whom used
themselves to practise in the big building which is now the
Collector's Office, opposite the gate of the Port Trust
premises, and which was for many years the habitation of
the Supreme Court at Madras. The present High Court
is a mighty monument to the development of ' The Law *
in Madras. In the early days of Fort St. George the
Company administered its own justice to its own people,.
and the court was held in a building in the Fort. Punish-
ments in those far-off times, judicial or otherwise, were
1 Major de Haviland, of the Madras Engineers, built St. George's
on a plan designed by Major Caldwell, his senior in the service.
Major de Haviland both designed the Kirk and built it, and he-
devoted himself to his work and was very proud of his creation,,
which was nevertheless much criticized by nnfriendly critics.
HERE AND THERE
105
usually severe ; and the Records show that even a civil
servant of junior rank who gave trouble was liable to be
awarded some such penalty as to sit for an hour or more
on a sharp-backed ' wooden horse, ' with or without
weights attached to the delinquent's feet. In the town
that grew up outside the Fort, justice as between natives
of the soil was administered by an Indian adikhari, who
represented the lord of the soil. As the Company's in-
fluence and authority increased, various courts of law were
created — and the Records show that there were certainly
crimes enough to justify their creation. A large number
of the criminal trials in the earlier years of Madras were
in respect of thefts of children, to sell them as slaves,
especially to Dutch merchants along the coast, where the
victims were not likely to be traced. Slavery was a recog-^
nized condition of life in old Madras, as indeed it was in-
the whole of Europe ; and in the Council-book of Fort
St. George there is still to be seen an Order, dated
106 THE STORY OF MADRAS
September 29, 1687, " that Mr. Fraser do buy fforty young
Sound Slaves for the Rt. Hon'ble Company," who were to
be made to work as boatmen in the Company's fleet of
surf-boats. It was in reference to a slave that the first
case of trial by jury was held in Madras, in 1665, and it
Avas a cause celebre. The prisoner was a Mr?. Dawes,
who was accused of having murdered a slave girl in her
service. The Governor himself, who, like a doge of Venice,
was both ruler and judge, was on the bench, and the
tv/elve jurymen gave a unanimous verdict that Mrs. Dawes
was ' guilty of the murther, but not in mannere and forme,'
by which they seem to have meant that the circumstances
of the case exonerated her from the capital charge. Being
pressed to give a verdict ' without exception or limita-
tion,* they brought in a unanimous verdict of ' not guilty,'
whereupon the Governor felt that, although the woman
had been guilty of a crime, he had no help for it but to set
her free. He thereupon wrote to the Directors in England,
-expressing his disapproval of ' such an unexpected verdict,'
and notifying that in his ignorance of the law and its
formalities he was by no means confident that he had done
the right thing ; and the end of it was that the Governor,
presumably with the Directors' approval, created two
justices, on whom was thereafter to fall the responsibility of
hearing all such serious cases. Change upon change !
and to-day the Madras High Court, with the various other
courts in different parts of the city, is a very visible symbol
of the serious reality of the administration of justice.
The story of the origin of the principal literary and
scientific institutions in Madras is interesting. In the
olden times, when there were no literary or scientific
magazines by which an ' exile in the East' could keep him-
self in touch with the developments of genius throughout the
world, people in India with literary or scientific tastes had
to be content to gratify their tastes with local researches.
HERE AND THERE 107
and to depend upon one another for any interchange of
ideas. This meant that old-time literary and scientific
societies in India were naturally more enthusiastic than
most such societies in India are now. Madras indeed has
been particularly fortunate in her time in having had
residents who were earnest in cultured pursuits, and whose
work survives, directly or indirectly, at the present day.
For example, it was an old-time Madras Civilian, with
a hobby for astronomy and with a private observatory of
his own, that created a local interest in the science and is
thereby to be regarded as the originator of the Madras
Observatory — the first British Observatory in the East, a
famous institution in olden days, which secured for Madras
the honour — which is still hers — of setting the standard of
time throughout the whole of India. The Madras Civilian
was Mr. William Petrie, an extraordinarily versatile
genius, who entered the service as a young man and rose
to be a member of the Government, yet managed to find
time for very serious astronomical pursuits in his house at
Nungambaukam. Going home to England on long furlough,
Mr. Petrie allowed the Madras Government to acquire his
instruments ; and in 1791, when he came back to Madras,
the Madras Observatory was built, with Mr. Petrie a*s
adviser.
Another enthusiastic scientist in Madras in the same
period was Dr. James Anderson, who, after many years
of work in the Company's medical service, settled down at
Madras as ' Physician-General,' on a salary of £2,500 a
year, and devoted himself and a large part of his hand-
some salary to botanical pursuits. He acquired in
Nungambaukam more than a hundred acres of land, which
included what are now the grounds of the houses that go
by the names of Pycrof t's Gardens and Tulloch's Gardens ;
and for nearly a quarter of a century, until his death. Dr.
Anderson utilized his leisure in the creation and development
108 THE STORY OF MADRAS
of a useful and ornamental botanical garden. He was
most enthusiastic over his hobby, and he was continually
carrying out botanical and agricultural experiments,,
of medical or commercial or industrial value. His grounds
were open to the public, and ' Dr. Anderson's Botanical
Gardens ' became famous, and were a place of popular
resort. Dr. Anderson died at the age of seventy-two ;
and in St. George's Cathedral his memory is graced with
a fme statue that was carved by the most eminent sculptor^
Sir Francis Chantrey, and for which his medical brethren
in the Madras Service subscribed. How many years after
his death his gardens continued to exist it might be diffi-
cult to say, but they r.iust have suffered badly from the
want of the ardent botanist's enthusiastic care. But the
botanic spirit that Dr. Anderson had started remained
alive in Madras ; for in 1835, when, to the regret
of many, his gardens had been split up into building-sites
for two private residences, there v/as still a sufficient
number of botanically inclined people in the city to found
the Agri-Horticultural Society of Madras, a still-energetic
body whose beautiful gardens at Teynampet deserve tO'
be more generally appreciated by the public than they are..
• The Madras Literary Society was founded a good many
years ago. Its work now is that of a circulating library ;
but in earlier times it was especially a * literary society,'
and its meetings, at which lectures were delivered or
papers were read and discussed, were crowded gatherings
of the leading Europeans in the city. The original Liter-
ary Society included scientific researches within its scope^
and scientific members used to discourse learnedly on
scientific subjects of topical interest, such as * The Land-
Crabs of Madras,' or * Prehistoric Tombs in the Salem
District, ' or ' Gold in the Wynaad of Malabar.' The name
of the Society remains, but the literary and scientific
meetings are no more. The last lecture, if memory fails
HERE AND THERE 109
not,, was delivered in the nineties, and the audience was
not large enough or enthusiastic enough to denote that
lectures were any longer in demand. As a ' Literary
Society and Auxiliary of the Royal Asiatic Society,' the
institution has outlived its requirement ; but it has a valu-
able store of more than 50,000 books, new and old, on all
subjects, and it is continually adding to the number ; and,
as a circulating library of a high standard, it fulfils an
excellent literary purpose.
The Madras Museum is a magnificent institution. It is
to the Madras Literary Society that it owes its being ; and
the Literary Society did Madras splendid service in the
initiation thereof. This was in 1851, when the Literary
Society presented its fine collection of geological speci-
mens to the Madras Government as the nucleus of the
rich and varied store of treasures that the Madras Museum
now displays. The Government lodged the geological
specimens in the ' Collector's Cutcherry ' — a house which
forms a part — the oldest part — of the Museum buildings of
to-day. Before the Government acquired the house in
1830 for a Cutcherry, the house had been private property,
and, under the name of the * Pantheon,' it had been for
many years the predecessor of the Old College as the
* Assembly Rooms ', wherein Madras Society had its balls,
its plays, and its big dinners. The name of the old
building still survives in the Pantheon Road, in which the
Museum is situated.
A high circular building on the Marina always attracts
a stranger's attention. It has a curious and interesting
history. It is commonly called ' The Ice-House,' and the
name suggests its original purpose. A number of years,
ago, when ice-factories had not been started and when in
Madras the luxury of the ' cool drink ' was unknown,
somebody conceived the idea of importing ship-loads of
blocks of ice from America. The idea was developed, and
110 THE STORY OF MADRAS
about the year 1840 a commercial scheme took shape. A
large circular building was erected close to the sea-beach as
a reservoir for the imported ice, which sailing-ships brought
in huge blocks from the western world ; and for a number
of years the scheme was a commercial success. The ice
was sold at four annas a pound, and many people in
Madras remember the time when it was the only ice that
was to be had, and large quantities of it were sold. With
the eventual institution of ice-factories, which could supply
ice at a much cheaper rate, the enterprise came to an end,
and for a, considerable time the ice-reservoir was out of
use. Then somebody bought it, and put windows into the
walls, and turned it into a residence ; and meanwhile, as
a result, of the construction of the harbour, the sea
receded a long way down the Ice-house shore. As a
residence, however, a house of so strange a shape was not
in request; and eventually some benevolent Hindus
turned it into a free hostel for any preacher or religious
teacher of repute, whatever his creed, who might be
temporarily sta-ying in Madras, especially if be felt
that he had atmessage to deliver to the city. But the
reputable prophets who availed them.selves of the proffered
hospitality were few ; and the ' Ice-house ' had a deserted
look. A few years ago the Madras Government acquired
it for the excellent purpose ofa ' Brahman Widows' Home *
for Brahman girl-widows at school. This is the purpose
that it now fulfils. From Ice-house to child- widows' home!
It is a great transformation — from a house whose chambers
were stored with hard blocks of cold ice to a house whose
chambers are aglow with the warmth of young life ! TUet'e
is_ room to hope, that jn course of time the Child -widows'
Home will have outlived its purpose — in the time when
gentler ideals wi'll'prevail, and the sorrows of child-widows
will have ceased, and the institution will no longer b'e^^
ne^d,', -
CHAPTER XV
NO MEAN CITY
It is less than three hundred years since Mr. Francis
Day, seeking a likely spot for a trading settlement^
surveyed the desolate sea-beach near the mouth of the
Cooum, and decided that the settlement should be there.
A few scattered huts on the shore and a few catamarans-
out at sea were the only signs of human life, and the
breakers that sported on the beach were the only manifes-
tations of activity. But the years have gone by — wild
times and quiet times, years of war and years of peaceful
progress— and the scene has changed, and great is the
transformation. In place of the scattered huts there are
huge buildings on the beach, and behind them is a great
and ever greater city. The catamarans have not dis-
appeared, but great ships pass to and fro in the offing or.
lie within the shelter of the harbour walls. The little
Factory ' in the Fort, within which the Company tran-
sacted its mercantile business, has gone ; but elsewhere in
its stead there are big offices of numerous commercial
firms; and, moreover, there are large 'factories' of the
modern kind, such as are denoted by tall chimneys and
the perpetual roar of whirring wheels. , "
The growth of .Madras is a remarkable testimony ta
British, enterprise, energy, and perseverance, and also ta
Indian appreciation of the new-comers and of their methods;'
andifcisa matter of satisfaction that many, illustrious Indiafi'Si
have played an energetic and conspicuous part in Jli&
development of the city and the promotion of its welfare^
In tnany respects the conditions were 'altogether unfivocttiH
able for the: foundation of a maritime city. There was^a»;
112 THE STORY OF MADRAS
natural harbour, and the breakers beat continually on the
shore ; and the so-called river was of little practical use.
The nearest Indian towns were a good many miles away,
and the Portuguese merchants in the neighbouring settle-
ment of Mylapore were commercial rivals, who might have
been supposed to have absorbed all the trade that was to
be had. Yet Madras is now a large city, with more than
half a million inhabitants ; and its commerce and its
industries have been so successful that its population is still
increasing rapidly. Houses are being built everywhere,
yet the demand increases. Not only are the suburbs being
extended, but moreover the gardens of existing houses are
being everywhere divided, so as to provide further building-
sites ; and two houses or more now stand within grounds
that were formerly occupied by only one.
But it is well for Madras that, except in respect of
some of its streets and particular localities, it is not a
crowded city, and that there is therefore room for such
additions. Madras has been called the ' City of Distances,*
and it still deserves the name ; for within its limits there
are some magnificent spaces, and in the garden of many
a private house the resident can sit of an evening and
imagine himself in a rural retreat, far from the madding
crowd.
Like all cities, Madras has its drab — very drab !—
quarters and it« mean — very mean ! — and straggHng streets.
Madras was not laid out on any definite plan. Like
ancient Rome, it had in the beginning to attract outsiders
to come and live there, and outsiders had to be given much
license to do things their own way, and the city was
allowed to grow just as it would ; and in respect of many
of its parts there is much room for criticism. But Madras
is a fine city nevertheless, with a number of stately build-
ings, both public and private, and with great possibilities ;
a.nd its * Marina ' can truly be called magnificent.
'NO MEAN CITY ' 11
Bat the greatest charm of ^\Iadras lies in its history.
It was here that the foundations of the Indian Empire may
be said to have been laid. The history of Madras is not a
story of aggressive warfare. The settlers were gentle
merchants, whose weapon was not the sword but the pen,
and whose only desire it was to be left alone to carry on
their business in peace. But the rising city was a continual
mark for the hostility of commercial and political rivals,
both European and Indian. It was a storm-centre, and
the storms were often fierce ; and the merchants were
often compelled to meet force with force. Moreover, the
merchants were men, and their doings therefore were by
no means always without reproach ; but, with due
allowance for human weakness, the history of Madras is a
history of which Madras may be proud. The city has
grown from strength to strength, and in its story there is
much inspiration. This little book has merely told the
story in part ; but it will have served its purpose if it has
in any way helped the reader to realize that the story of
INIadras is the story of no mean city.
INDEX
The figures refer to the pages
Admiralty House, 85
Agri-Hort/cultural Society, 108
Aix-la-Chapelle (Treaty), 28, 39
Amir Mahal, 67
Anderson, Dr. J., 107
Anderson, Rev. J., 95
Appar, 61
Arcot, Siege of, 64
Arcot, Prince of, 67
Armagaum, 2, 5. 9
Armenians, 19, 20
Armenian street, 19, 59
Assumption Church, 56
Aurangzeb, 39, 64
Bantam, 8
Bentinck (Governor-General), 94
Biden House. 86
Black Town (Old). 19, 22. 25, 26,
29
Black Town (New). 29. 31, 32
Bound Hedge, The, 41
Bourchier (Governor), 76
Brahman Widows' Home, lu9.
110
Carew (R. C Bishop), 95
Carnatic, The, 63
Cassa Verona, 39
Chandragiri (Rajah), 6,7, 63. 64
Cliepauk, 22
-Chepauk Palace, 22, 63-68
China, 22
China Bazaar, 22
■Chintadripet, 23
Christian College, 87, 95
Clive (Governor), 76, 77
Clive, Robert, 17, 28, 64, 81
Cochrane' s Canal, 35
Cogan, Andrew, 7, 9
Convent Schools, 97. 98
Cooum River, 6, 9, 12
Coral trade, 20
Corrie, Bishop, 101
Corporation of Madras, 90
Cyclone, 78, 79
Dalhousie (Governor-General),
67, 98
Danish Lutheran Mission, 92
Da-ud Khan. 13, 14, 22
Dav. Francis, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 7, 8, 9,
111
De Haviland, Major, 104 (Note)
Diamond trade, 20
Doveton College, 98, 99
Dupleix, 27, 39
DuPre, Mr., 31, 32
Dutch, The, 2, 5, 13. 39, 56
Egmore, 1, 21, 31, (acquisition),
35, 41, (the Egmore Fort), 43-
46
Elliot, Hugh (Governor), 103
Elphinstone Park, 38
Engineering College, 87
' English Burying Place ', 51 , 52
Ephraim, Father, 57-59. 88, 89
* Factory,' The. 12, 69, 71
' Female Boarding School ', 93
Flag (E. India Co.), 81
Fort St. George, 12-19, 27, 30
French, The, 14, 15, 26, 27-31, 50
'Garden-Houses', 70
I Gentoos (Telugus), 19, 89
I Georgetown. 29
j Georgetown Convent, 97
Goa, 1, 58
Golconda, King of, 13. 22. 35, 39.
64
Government House, Madras, 74-
77
Government House. Guindy, 77
Gyfford (Governor), 72
116
INDEX
Haidar Ali. 15, 22, 31-33, 40, 65
Harbour, The, 79
Harris High School, 99
Hastings, Warren, 63, 78
High Court, 194
Hindu High School, 99
Holmes, John. 92, 93
Hyderabad, Nizam of, 64
Hynmers, Joseph, 53
Ice-House, The, 109
Jews in Madras. 20, 21, 25
Kuppam, 1
Labourdonnais, 27
Lally. 30, 31, 40, 50. 75
Langhorn (Governor). 58
Law College, 87
Literary Society, 108
Little Mount, 60, 61
Luz Church, The, 62
Macartney (Governor), 66
Macau lay, 94
Madras Literary Society, 108
Madre-de-Deus Church, 62
Male Asylum, 43, 44. 91
Manucci, 9 (Note)
Marina, The, 79. 87
Marmalong Bridge, 20
Mastan, 62
Masulipatam, 2, 7
Medical College, 87, 94
Miller, Rev. Dr., 95
Mohammed Ali {See ' Walajah'),
64
Mohammedans, 21, 22
Mohammedan College, 87
' Moors'. 21, 24
Murray, Mrs., 93
Museum. The, 108, 109
Mylapore, 1. 5, 6. 38, 61 {See
also San Thome)
Nattukottai Chetties. 21
Naval Hospital Road, 85
Nungumbaukam. 37, 41
Observatory, The, 107
' Old College,' The, 99, 100
Orde, Ralph, 89, 90
Pachaiyappa's College, 87, 96, 97"
Parthasarathy Temple, 1
Petrie, W., 107
Peyton, Capt., 27
Peyalvar, 61
Pitt (Governor), 73
Pondicherry, 15, 20, 21, 60
Poonamallee (Naik), 6, 7
Popham's Broadway, 9 (Note)
Portuguese, The, 1, 2, 5, 6, 39..
56, 58, 112
' Portuguese Burving Place', 59
Pottinger, Sir H., 96
Powney family, The. 53
Presentation Nuns, 97
Presidency College, 87, 95, 96
Pulicat, 2
Pursewaukam, 35, 41
Queen Mary's College forWomen,
87
Rajah Mahal (Chandragiri), 7
Royapettah, 22
St. Andrew's (The ' Kirk '), 103,
104
St. Andrew's Church (R. C), 58,.
59
St. Gabriel's High School, 95
St. George's Cathedral. 101
St. Mary's Cathedral (R.C), 59-,
60
St. Marv's Charity School. 91
St. Mary's Church (Fort). 17..
47-55
St. Marv's High School. 95
St. Matthias's Church, 20
St. Patrick's Orphanage, 88
St. Thomas's Mount, 61, 62
San Thome. 13,31,32, (acquisi-
tion). 38-40. (redoubt). 43.
Cathedral. 61. 104 (S^e also-
• Mylapore '
Saunders (Governor), 73
Sea-Gate. 80
Senate House, 87, 96
INDEX
117
Slavery in Madras, 106
S.P.C.K., 91
Teachers' College, 98
Thomas, St., 38, 60, 61
Tipu Sultan. 31. 43, 65, 66, 75
Tiruvalluvar, 61
Tondiarpet, 35
Trincomalee, 27
Triplicane, 1, 21. 22, 32, (acquisi-
tion). 35
Triplicane River, 6, 8 {See
' Cooum ')
Triplicane Temple, 1
Umdat-ul-Umara, 66
University of Madras, 66
Uscan, Peter. 19, 20
Vepery, 1, (acquisition), 37-88
Vepery Convent School, 98
Walajah (Nawab). 22, 64-66
Wall Tax Road, 33
Warner. Rev. P.. 58, 89
Washermanpet, 24
Weavers' Street, 23
White Town, 19. 25. 27
Widows' Home, The, 109
Yale (Governor). 16, 23. 35. 57,
53. 90
PRINTED AT THE S.P.C.K. PRESS, MADRAS — 1921 CI 5732
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