# On the Coromandel Coast/Chapter 9

CHAPTER IX
OLD MADRAS AND ITS WORTHIES
A mirror is of no use to a blind man ; in the same way knowledge is of no use to a man without discernment.-SLOKA.
We shared a house with the archdeacon for a few months and then settled in a smaller one on the Nungumbaukum High Road. Nungumbaukum is a small native village with only a few of its original rice-fields and cocoanut- palm topes left. It is all part of the extensive Choultry Plain. The River Cooum divides Nungumbaukum from Chetput and Egmore, and is here a broad, shallow, inland stream broken by stretches of pale sand, shining pools of water, and belts of emerald green herbage. There are trees everywhere, always green, and at certain seasons covered with luxuriant blossom. Many of the houses are of historical interest and connected with names that may be found in the annals of science and commerce.
It was in the very heart of Nungumbaukum that James Anderson, M.D., lived, the first Physician-General of the Madras Medical Service. He occupied a house, afterwards owned by Sir Thomas Pycroft, and now known as Pycroft's Gardens.
The Service merits more than a few words of mention, since it is ornamented with a long line of botanists and naturalists from Edward Bulkley, the compiler of the first list of Madras birds, to Ronald Ross, the discoverer of the malarial germ in the mosquito. Like the Civil ​and Ecclesiastical Services, it has its origin at the very commencement of the East India Company's operations. When the merchants received their Charter (1599-1600), and fitted out their first expedition under Sir James Lancaster, a surgeon was one of the paid officers on the staff.
The training of the early medical man consisted of serving an apprenticeship to a surgeon and an apothecary, which two professions were generally united in one person. At the termination of the apprenticeship a certificate was given which constituted his diploma. The knowledge of the ordinary practitioner was not great. He knew how to 'let blood,' which seemed to be considered a panacea for all complaints. He could set a simple fracture, and he had some knowledge of the preparation of infusions, emulsions, and extractions from herbs. Of tropical diseases he was totally ignorant. It was not surprising to read that Master Surfflict, who sailed on the Dragon with Sir Henry Middleton (1604-5) in the combined capacity of doctor of physic and chaplain, was counted incapable both as a spiritual and medical adviser, and utterly unable to cope with the 'calentures' and 'fluxes,' as they called fever and dysentery in those days, that decimated the crew. His knowledge must have been of the most primitive nature. It was certainly not sufficient to enable the physician to heal himself. He died on the voyage home, of one of the strange tropical complaints which had carried off so many of his patients.
As soon as settlements were established surgeons were appointed to them. They were recognised as covenanted servants of the Company ; and their names appeared on the pay-lists with those of the Governor and the rest of the staff. They messed in the Company's house with their fellow-officers, and had their place marked out in order of precedence. The salary of a surgeon was thirty ​pounds a year, and it remained unchanged for at least a hundred years. He was expected to prepare medicines and make salves for emergencies ; and he was provided with an assistant, called a surgeon's-mate, who sometimes rose to be surgeon himself. He was allowed to engage in country trade, and was often to be seen at the sea-gate buying and selling with the merchants.
About the year 1750, when the Madras Army was being called into existence, it became necessary to appoint surgeons to the regiments then being raised. They moved with the troops, and though they had no rank and were dependent entirely on the goodwill of the commanding officer for their position, no disadvantage was felt until a century later. They maintained friendly relations with the officers and with the men under their charge, and rendered good service in the field. In times of peace their small number perhaps sufficed, but during the war in the Carnatic, in the middle of the eighteenth century, it was insufficient to cope with the exigencies of the times. After the victory at Wandiwash, Coote deplored the want of medical attendance and hospital comforts. He wrote from the field (1760) :
'Really the scene is now dreadful to see. Such a multitude of poor objects, and not in my power to give them the least assistance for want of every one necessary requisite for an hospital. I make no doubt upon this representation you will do everything humanity can direct. If it is possible to send surgeons and proper people from Madras to attend the wounded here, who are very numerous, you may by that means save the lives of many gallant men, several of whom have not been dressed since the day of action. As I shall be obliged to carry away some surgeons out of the few, numbers must lose their lives.'
The result of this pathetic appeal was a considerable ​addition to the Company's medical staff, which increased to such an extent that it required a separate organisation to control it. In 1786 a Board of Direction was formed with Anderson at its head, and thus the Madras Medical Service was definitely established.
Anderson was a great botanist, and might be called the pioneer of the Botanical Gardens of Madras, although he had nothing to do with the present Agri-Horticultural Society and its beautiful grounds in Teynampet (founded 1835-6). His experiments were confined to his own private garden, where he cultivated plants with a view of developing the indigenous resources of the country and of naturalising foreign plants of mercantile value.
A visitor to Madras in 1792 described him as being at that period an elderly man and somewhat infirm. The garden was shown by an assistant. There were a number of flowers and fruits foreign to Madras. Some of them, the loquat, pommelo (grape-fruit), custard-apple, and papaw, are well-known in the present day. The papaw, a fruit like a pear-shaped melon growing upon a small tree, is rich in digestive property, and yields a drug which is used in medicine.
Anderson died in 1809 at the age of seventy-two and was buried in the cemetery on the island. He corresponded with Sir Joseph Banks, sending him a great deal of information that is now incorporated in standard works on botany. He especially directed attention to the cultivation of sugar-cane, coffee, and cotton, which plants in the present day are permanently established in different parts of the Presidency.
At his death a number of plants were removed from his garden in Nungumbaukum to the compound of a house in Saidapet on the Mount Road. There they were carefully tended by another botanist, and the experiments were continued until 1836. The work by that time had ​grown too big and too important to be left to private enterprise. The Agri-Horticultural Society was formed, and Robert Wight, an eminent and enthusiastic botanist, became its honorary secretary. He threw himself heart and soul into the creation of the beautiful gardens of which Madras is justly proud.
As late as 1877 there might be seen in the compound of Pycroft's Gardens and at Saidapet strange trees and shrubs foreign to Madras, the relics of Anderson's efforts when he dreamed of the possibilities of the fertile soil of South India.
Roused by the example of Anderson and other scientific men the Company began to turn its attention to scientific research. With the crushing of the power of Tippoo Sultan the country became more settled. The battlefield no longer required the undivided services of the medical faculty, and men had more leisure to devote to any branch of science that promised to be useful.
Benjamin Heyne, M.D., a contemporary of Anderson, was an expert in minerals as well as in botany. He travelled with eyes and ears alert, and discovered, among other minerals, valuable deposits of sulphur. Pascal Benza was an Italian, who entered the Medical Service of Madras. He also assisted in developing the mineral resources of the Presidency. His career was unfortunately cut short by a fall from his horse on the Nilgiris. The injury to his head must have affected his brain. He committed suicide after being invalided home to the land of his birth. Turnbull Christie was in the Service and obtained leave to apply himself to science; he spent his own money on expensive instruments that were necessary for his experiments. The Company, though ready to allow their servants to do special work, were not prepared to spend money on laboratory furniture. John Leyden, physician, was another member of the Service. He possessed a ​marvellous power of acquiring languages and devoted himself to the study of the literature of India. Had he lived he would have made valuable translations and annotations. He was transferred to Bengal, and died early from the effects of the climate. His name is best known by the poetry that he has left. Another botanist, whose name is perpetuated in an Indian plant, is Eoxburgh, who, like Leyden, passed on to Bengal, but not before he had done something for the history of the flora of Southern India. Harris, Balfour, Herklots, Shortt are a few more out of the many that adorned the Service.
The man who is perhaps best known to posterity is T. C. Jerdon. His name is familiar to every naturalist in England as well as in India. His catalogue of Indian birds is a standard work on the subject. In drawing it up he was greatly assisted by Walter Elliot, of the Civil Service. Jerdon was on the Nilgiris and in Travancore, the Deccan, Trichinopoly, and other parts of the Presidency. He was also in Madras in 1845, when he was secretary of the Madras Literary Society, which was founded by Sir John Newbolt. His peculiarities, the result of his intense love of his favourite pursuits, were well known, and many are the tales still told of him. One of his own relatives wrote thus in the columns of the 'Madras Mail' :
'Jerdon, the great naturalist and botanist, married my mother's cousin, and it is to my mother that I am indebted for the following reminiscences. To tell a snake story is to court incredulity, but I can vouch for the truth of these incidents. Jerdon and a companion were walking in the jungle one day, Jerdon, as usual, poking into every hole and bush. Suddenly he stooped down to the level of a bank and exclaimed, "Got him, by Jove!" adding quickly, "No, by Jingo! but he's got me." It appeared that he had seen a cobra slip into a rat-hole. The temptation ​was too great to be resisted. He seized the disappearing tail, intending to pull the reptile out and fling it against a tree or stone; but the snake proved to be more than a match for the naturalist. It doubled out of a second hole close to the first and nipped its captor on the top of the forefinger. In a moment his penknife was out and the top of the finger sliced off. "That will do," remarked the enthusiast as he bound up the bleeding wound. It did do, for he proved to be none the worse for the accident.'
Another snake incident might have ended fatally for his wife a long-suffering woman who had much to endure from her husband's pursuits and hobbies. She was in the habit of sitting in the evening at the foot of a staircase that led up to the roof of the house. One day at sunset she was occupying her favourite seat, her attention fully absorbed by her guitar an instrument upon which she played with some proficiency. Suddenly she was startled by the report of a gun close behind her and the sight of a cobra writhing in its death agony a short distance away. Jerdon had observed the snake swaying to the music, and without saying a word to his wife, he fetched his gun and shot it over her shoulder.
He was by nature rash, his pursuit of the study of Nature leading him into situations fraught with danger. He once kept two baby pythons in a box full of straw which was placed in a spare room. He handled them freely, allowing them to glide over his body and wind themselves round his limbs. They grew rapidly, and as they increased in size they naturally increased in strength. When they were six or seven feet in length, Jerdon was playing with them with his customary freedom, when suddenly the house was roused by his shouts for help. A friend ran to the room and found him gasping for breath with a python wound tightly round him. So strong had ​it become that it had to be cut to pieces before he could be released.
It is recorded that when travelling in Egypt he obtained two crocodile's eggs with which he was highly delighted. He carried one of the eggs inside his shirt next his body, and in due course of time a young crocodile was hatched about the size of a large lizard. It was deposited in a bath-tub with a log for its perch and was fed upon the yolk of egg and tender meat. It grew rapidly, like the young pythons, and became too big for its tub. It developed a habit of travelling over the house and snapping at the heels of the inmates, and it became necessary to banish it to a tank in the garden. There it distinguished itself by eating the house cat and drowning a half-grown spotted deer, which it seized by the nose and held under water when it came to drink. After this it was condemned to death, and Jerdon's study of the habits of crocodiles came to an abrupt termination.
He spent hours in the open watching the birds, beasts, and reptiles in their natural haunts ; or he seated himself silent and motionless in a tree to learn the ways of the tree-frog and the lemur. On return from these expeditions his pockets were stuffed with specimens collected during the day. They were intended for the jar of ether, but frequently some of them escaped and might be seen wandering over his person.
Jerdon's name had been familiar to me from my childhood through my father's love of natural history. It was strange to come in touch with one of the very places where he had pursued his studies of king-crows, honey suckers, minivets, and babblers so common to the compounds of Madras. He must often have loitered by the Cooum watching the shy birds as they came down to the silvery shallows to drink and bathe. Birds as well as beasts suffer from thirst. Even the butterflies ​enjoy the moisture of the cool, wet sand by the water's edge, and sit with outspread wings in the sunlight daintily quenching their thirst. Jerdon must have revelled in the abundance of tropical nature on the Choultry Plain. The trees and bushes are full of feathered folk; and every flower-bed has its butterflies, giant black and red, graceful green and bronze, and tiny trembling blue. The coarse grass of the compounds teems with insect-life in spite of the hungry birds, the seven sisters, for ever hopping and babbling and feasting. Upon the scarlet poinsettia the black robin sings, keeping a watchful eye on that particular piece of the garden which it has appropriated to itself and its family as a hunting-ground. Let another dare to poach a fat grub on its preserve and the song is hushed, the robin is at him with a sharp warning not to trespass on other folks' land. The birds have their regular beats and keep to them. Great is the racket when those preserves are encroached upon by strangers.
After leaving Egmore and Nungumbaukum the Cooum circles round Chintadripettah, the old weaving town of the Company. It was founded by the merchants (1734) for their weavers, spinners, painters, washers, and dyers. The site was chosen on account of the protection offered by the river which more than half surrounds it. In its earlier days Chintadripettah may possibly have been pleasanter than it is now. In picturesqueness it lacks nothing. The road between the river and the village still gives beautiful scenery of wood and water. There are two or three old garden-houses standing back among the trees, with here and there a massive arch and handsome pillar that bespeak better times. The phosphates bred in the bed of the Cooum impregnate the air and drive the fastidious away. The same reason prevents the wanderer from lingering in the Napier Park, a small ornamental piece of public ground at the entrance of ​Chintadripettah and opposite to the present Government House.
On the other side of the river below the old weavers' hamlet is the military cemetery. It lies at the extreme west-end of the island, and is a quiet retired spot little visited except by those who have occasion to go there. It was laid out as a burial-ground in the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1787-8 it was surrounded by a wall that is historical, and lives in the archives of the Madras Engineers. It was built by Garrow by private contract at a cost to Government of thirteen thousand pagodas (over forty thousand rupees). It was one of the extravagances that led to the withdrawal of large building contracts from the hands of private individuals, and caused Government to carry out its own works through its own engineers.
The distance between the leafy shades of the Choultry Plain and the busy native town of Madras, known in my time as Blacktown, but now called Georgetown, is not great; yet there could be no greater contrast of scene as one passes from one to the other. The luxuriant herbage gives place to narrow streets thronged with busy humanity. The only tree that remains faithful is the cocoanut palm, which springs from the tiny enclosed yards and lifts its crown high up into the brilliant sunshine and humid sea-breeze. Red-tiled roofs and colour-washed walls, the scarlet, blue, and white clothing of the people, the green palms and the azure sky make an oriental picture full of charm.
Historians differ as to the exact age of Blacktown. On one point they are agreed. If it existed at all before Fort St. George was founded, it was an insignificant fishing village of no importance. The centre of trade was at Mylapore, and until the English formed their settlement the ships rode at anchor before that old ​seaport. With the advent of the Company's merchants the fishing village became a busy town containing the native traders, who served the Company as middlemen and procured goods from inland. The quarter occupied by the Hindu merchants was called the Gentoo town, and was included in that part which was generally known as Blacktown. When the fort was threatened by the enemy, the English were equally concerned for the safety of their native brokers without whom commerce would have come to a standstill as for their own safety. To ensure their better protection, Yale, when Governor, walled in the Gentoo town without the consent of his council. The houses came close up to the old fort wall on the north and stretched along the beach. The sea washed close in so close that in heavy weather the spray of the surf dashed into the -verandahs. In place of the present Broadway, the only street in Georgetown that has any pretension to respectable dimensions, there was a small stream, a tributary of the Cooum. The walling-in of Gentoo town was a subject of contention in the council. It had been Yale's pet scheme when the place was menaced by the wandering hordes of Mahrattas, and he conceived the idea of making it a kind of outwork to the fort. Being of an imperious disposition and apt to act impetuously, he took the work in hand on his own responsibility and erected the wall. He imagined that he would have no difficulty in justifying himself as soon as the directors understood the importance of his action; but he reckoned without his host. His tenure of office coming to an abrupt termination, his successor refused to accept the liability or sanction the outlay; and Yale was sued for twelve thousand rupees, the cost of the fortification. Upon the line of this old mud wall was subsequently built another of a more substantial character, portions of which may still be seen.
​ The Choultry gate in the north wall, now filled in with masonry, was the chief entrance into the fort from Blacktown, although there was another called north or middle gate in the same wall. The Choultry, the original court of justice, was situated near the gate. The dwellings of the native merchants came up to the wall, from which they were separated by a space sufficiently broad to allow of the garrison being paraded there. These houses belonged chiefly to the Armenian merchants. The barracks, according to Vibart, were situated in this neighbourhood outside the fort, probably between the Choultry and middle gates. The married soldiers were allowed to live with their wives in Blacktown, a privilege much appreciated by the men.
Along the parade which followed the north wall to the seashore the daily market was held. For the first thirty or forty years the market people brought their goods into the open space, and spread them on mats on the ground, as is still the custom in up-country towns. Towards the end of the seventeenth century the English merchants built a row of small open shops, called 'bouticas,' for the accommodation of the market people. They were on the town side of the parade and faced the fort wall, and were let out for a small sum monthly. It was the first established market possessed by Madras, the humble predecessor of the imposing Moore market of the present day.
Here Blacktown met Whitetown daily. Here Mrs. Nicks, Mrs. Yale, with other ladies of the fort, wearing quilted cotton hoods or sunbonnets, came to do their marketing, while their husbands were busy in the consultation-room or at the sea-gate. Each lady was accompanied by two or three slaves, happy chattering creatures, on whom the bonds of slavery sat very lightly. If their conduct was satisfactory, the mistress ​did not forget to purchase betel leaf and sweets as a reward.
It was a busy bustling scene, this morning meeting of the fort and town. The vendors of the market-stuffs sat by their wares brushing away the flies, disputing the price, fanam by fanam, cash by cash, gesticulating, talking, and refusing the offered sums, even as their hands were extended to receive the money. The thrifty housewives depreciated the goods as vehemently. Yet in spite of the chaffering and noise, good-nature prevailed between the dark and the fair, and all were friendly.
The Portuguese ladies, whose husbands had forsaken Mylapore and had come to live in Gentoo town, mingled with the English women and gossiped as they bargained. They wore the black lace mantilla over their heads, just as Taylor describes their descendants in later years, and they prided themselves on their blue blood and their name of castee.1 The common tongue of the household and the market was Portuguese; it was spoken by slaves and servants, mistress and shopkeeper. On all sides it echoed, with Tamil and English interspersed, as the news of the day was exchanged.
There was no post, no English mail, except at very rare intervals. The afternoon parties at the garden-houses, approaching weddings, the last case of sickness and death were discussed with absorbing interest. The latest movements of the terrible Mahrattas, greatly exaggerated by the native imagination, were related; and the last tricks and delinquencies of the household slaves were confided by each housekeeper to her neighbour. Gossip and scandal, chaffering and bargaining filled the air. The sight of a diamond merchant passing along in his palanquin from the larger mart at the sea- gate reminded them that business was over and that their ​husbands would be returning. The soldiers, having finished their drill, were sitting down before their wooden platters to breakfast, and the sun burned fiercely overhead. At the bidding of their mistresses the slaves hoisted the laden market-baskets on to their heads, and the English ladies hurried back to their homes inside the fort.
It was a dirty, squalid Blacktown, albeit a very happy one as a rule. The contrast between it and the well-laid out, carefully preserved fort distressed the worthy merchants. In vain they represented to the citizens, through the headmen of their castes, that cleanliness was desirable and beneficial. The citizens of Blacktown did not wish to be clean. It was their time-honoured custom to throw their household rubbish into the streets, where children and pigs gamboled among buffaloes and goats, and they said that it was good enough for them. When they wanted it cleaner, they would clean it themselves.
The municipal difficulties of the merchants were reported to the Board at home, and the master-mind of Josiah Child was brought to bear upon the subject. He gave Blacktown a mayor and corporation, and the town was raised to the dignity of a municipal city (1687). It was an unexpected, unsolicited honour, and one that was not appreciated at the time, although it has made Madras the oldest municipal town in India. There was no pride about Blacktown in those days, and its mayoralty was a kind of white elephant to it. The civic functionary and his council might be elected, but they could not conjure up by virtue of their office the town hall and the public buildings, which Josiah Child pictured when he sent out the charter, the maces, and the robes of office. In happy ignorance of the customs of the Hindus, the masterful chairman of the directors fondly hoped that the robes of office would be an attraction to the native citizen, and lure him on to appear as a candidate for an aldermanic ​seat. He little knew that a Brahmin, whose full dress then consisted of a snowy flowing loin-cloth and a sacred thread, would have fled to further India sooner than don an alderman's robe. In spite of its mayor and corporation, which soon became entirely Europeanised, Blacktown remained unaltered, busy in the morning with its trade, noisy at night with its punch and 'rack' houses, the delight alike of the British soldier and the native. Occasionally its happiness was clouded by the shadow of famine or by the approach of an enemy ; and there were times when it was shaken to its centre by religious troubles in the shape of caste disputes. There were quarrels between the different sects, and at times they raged high with deeds of violence. The more peaceful natives quietly closed their houses and departed to the villages of Chetput, Nungumbaukum, Triplicane or even further afield. The absence of the washers, weavers, dyers, brickmakers, and other workmen inconvenienced the Company more than a little, as it stopped commercial operations. On this account the religious troubles of Blacktown penetrated the consultation-room itself, and absorbed the attention of the council. Different sides were taken by the members, and the quarrel threatened to be as fierce round the office-table as it was in the streets. Peace and order prevailed in the end, and the busy city resumed its ordinary life.
There were other and happier occasions when the Black and White towns united in common rejoicings. These were held when firmans l were granted by the native rulers, making trade concessions to the Company, when native ambassadors were received, and when a new sovereign was proclaimed. At the proclamation of James II. the servants of the Company, the free merchants, and a large number of natives who were connected with ​the Company, gathered in the Company's garden by the Cooum, and formed themselves into one of those motley processions which are now only to be seen in native States. The Governor, with his council and other members of his staff dressed in their robes of office, rode on horseback; native merchants, resplendent in jewels, followed in palanquins; and a large number of soldiers, armed peons, English trumpeters, and native tomtom beaters marched on foot. The Company's flag was carried on an elephant, and the procession was accompanied by a crowd of Blacktown inhabitants. The entire length of the town was traversed and the cortege halted before the Choultry gate. The proclamation was read, the Company's servants listening bareheaded and with drawn swords. After volleys of firearms and salutes, they all returned to the garden-house, where festivities were kept up with feasting and fireworks into the night, and many bowls of punch were consumed.
There were other processions of a different nature which too often passed through the streets of Gentoo town. Though Englishmen lived in the White town, their bodies were laid to rest in the Guava Garden in Blacktown. The coffin was taken into the church for the first part of the service, and from there it was carried through one of the gates in the north wall and along the crowded streets of the native city. The noise of buying and selling, disputing and drinking was hushed as the sympathy of Oriental nature was roused at the sight of the grief of the exiles.
For a hundred years did this Gentoo town of the Armenian and native merchants flourish. Then came the French, and the whole of the town enclosed by Yale in his city wall was levelled to the ground.
* ↑ 1 Of pure blood.
* ↑ 1 Licences to trade.