History :Spencer’s and the railwayman

It was in this column at the beginning of this year, January 13th in fact, while recalling Alan Turing, ‘the Father of the Computer’, that I mentioned that his maternal grandfather was a railwayman, E.W. Stoney, who had retired to his cottage in Coonoor.

 At that time, I was certain that I had come across the name Stoney somewhere but for the life of me could not remember where. 

Then the other day, while researching a project I’m working on, the name leapt out of the page from a book I was going through,The Spencer Legend — and to think I couldn’t remember the man I had mentioned in that book of mine!

Stoney, I had recorded, was a very good friend of Eugene Oakshott who in 1897 kick-started the growth of Spencer’s by making the proprietary firm a public limited company. 

And the first shareholder of Spencer & Co Ltd was E.W. Stoney, a senior manager with the South Indian Railway. 

How much that connection had to do with Spencer’s being the caterers for the SIR must be 1eft to the gossip-mongers, but it was a relationship that lasted well over 50 years.

How close Stoney’s connection with the Chairman, Eugene Oakshott, was can be gauged from the fact that Stoney was made a member of the Spencer’s Board in 1902 and served on it till 1904. 

Presumably, he had by then retired from the SIR where his service had earned him a CIE (Commander of the Indian Empire).

 He must have bought The Gables in Coonoor around then and watched his grandson run about in the premises.

It would be nice to know what Stoney was in the SIR. Spencer’s records mention him as being a General Manager at a time when an Agent headed the operation.

 A history of the SIR does not mention him at all. But to have got a CIE he must have been very senior in the organisation and an achiever. Maybe I’ll hear about it one of those days from someone in ‘Trichinopoly’ where the SIR was headquartered.

S Muthiah  Metro plus 4 Aug 2014