Madras History :Remembering the Co-operator

 Sir Frederick Nicholson 

The invitation I received recently read, “On account of 61st All India Co-operative Week Celebrations conducted from November 4, 2014 to November 20, 2014 in commemoration of the architect of the Co-operative Movement in India Sir Frederick Nicholson and the Co-operative Pioneers in Nilgiris such as Thiru H B Ari Gowder, we have programmed a seminar on 15.11.2014 at Nilgiris District Plantation Workers’ Co-operative Society, Coonoor …”

I hadn’t heard of any celebrations in Madras recalling Nicholson, but I can understand the Nilgiris interest in him. After retirement in 1904, Nicholson and his wife Catherine settled in Coonoor, where he played an active role in helping found the Coonoor Urban Co-operative Bank in 1916 and remained associated with it till his death in 1936. He and his wife and their son Major T B Nicholson are buried in the Tiger Hill Cemetery in Coonoor. 

On November 15, wreaths were placed on their graves and a portrait of Sir Frederick was unveiled in the Nilgiri History Museum. Frederick Augustus Nicholson arrived in Madras as a 23-year-old member of the Indian Civil Service in 1869. He was, in time, to serve as Collector of Tinnevelly, Madras and Coimbatore. It was while serving in the last-named post that he fell in love with the Nilgiris.

In the aftermath of the great Madras Famine of 1876 – which killed an estimated ten million people and virtually wiped out farming in the Presidency — the Government in 1892 set up a Famine Commission to study how such a disaster could be prevented in the future. Nicholson’s report was published in 1895 and the Indian National Congress, then in its first flush, insisted on its implementation, but it was to be 1904 before the co-operative movement began getting under way, with such recommendations as the establishing in the districts of co-operative agricultural credit societies and co-operative banks being implemented.

Nicholson, following in the footsteps of Dr. Francis Day of the Madras Medical Service, who is considered the father of India’s fishing industry, now turned his attention to fisheries in the Presidency. 

In July 1905, he presented the Government a report on the need to not only increase fish production in a Presidency that had the longest coastline in India, but also improve fish curing methods (helping inland areas get a hygienically better quality of cured fish) as well as those of making fish manure badly needed by the plantations whose constant complaint at the time was the poor quality of fish guano. 

Requested to investigate how these improvements could be made, Nicholson visited Japanese and European fishery centres and on his return was made the Honorary Director of the Bureau of Fisheries, Madras Presidency, which was established in 1907 on his recommendation. The Bureau, the first in the country, was the nucleus of today’s Departments of Fisheries in all the Southern States. 

One of the first things the Bureau did was to establish in 1908 an experimentation centre, the first in the country, in Ennore. The techniques of fish curing it developed became standard practice not only in India but in all Britain’s tropical territories.

Oxford-educated Nicholson became the First Member of the Board of Revenue in 1889. In 1902, he was appointed to the Madras Legislative Council and was knighted that year. In between, in 1897, he was made a Member of the Imperial Legislative Council. 

Some years later, in 1905, he was to make yet another significant contribution to Madras. Teaming with the Rev. Canon Sell and Sir S Subramania Aiyar, all members of the Syndicate of the University of Madras, they recommended to Government “that there should be for so ancient and important a language, with a classical literature of so unique a character, a dictionary worthy of its subject.” 

The seed was sown for the University of Madras’s Tamil Lexicon (Miscellany, March 28, 2011).

 Even that is a forgotten contribution of a man who dedicated himself to making life better and people more knowledgeable in the Madras Presidency

.S.Muthiah,  H 24 Nov 2014

Search For Old Jail Road !

The last fabulous huuuuge piece here is of the gateway of Madras Central Prison – 1837. 

This has an interesting story behind it.

 It was in the year 2009 when the Chennai High Court passed a verdict to send this piece of history to the gallows after it served its purpose for 172 years

. This prison has seen several important persons, including Subash Chandra Bose, Veer Savarkar, Annadurai etc. who served their grueling sentences here during the Indian Independence Struggle.

Though it was demolished in 2009, the Main gate, Jail Name plates and Cell no. 78 found a new home here in Steve Borgia Museum
travel.bhushavali.com


Where is or was the Old Jail, wonders Jayanthi Selvam, saying she uses Old Jail Road quite often. The road is the central portion of a three-part road, from east to west being Ebrahim Sahib Street, Old Jail Road and Basin Bridge Road in the southern shadow of what was the North, or Old Town, Wall, of which only the stretch preserved with the Maadi Poonga atop it is all that survives. It was south of a bastion of this wall that the Old Jail was established in 1804, though its roots go back to 1692.

The Old Jail’s premises, at the corner of Popham’s Broadway and Old Jail Road, was cleared of prisoners shortly after Independence and the campus was given to the Congress Prachar Sabha which ran a cottage industries training centre in the numerous buildings there.

When Kamaraj stepped down as Chief Minister in 1963, the enthusiasm for the training centre waned and the premises were handed over to the Central Polytechnic Institute and a new Arts College for Women in 1964.

 Four years later the last of the CPI’s constituent units moved to Adyar and the college expanded into the Bharathi Women’s Arts College. It was many years before the College got new buildings for its students, its early batches having used many a prison block, some of which survive, derelict, till today.

 S Muthiah, : H : 19 Oct 2014

Bridges And buildings

Bridge-building tales

 Here are a couple of tales about the building of bridges in 19th Century Madras as related to me by civil engineer D.H. Rao who has made delving into the histories of the city’s bridges his hobby. 

These are stories arising out of Government’s practice of getting estimates for civil work and then finding the costs have been exceeded. Inquiries follow, then as now, but what happens next?

 Nothing seems to change.

In the case of the 1840 18-arch Elphinstone Bridge over the Adyar (now lying derelict but looking solid, while constant maintenance work goes on on its neighbour, the new Thiru Vi Ka Bridge), on its completion, the Military Board declared it a magnificent piece of work.

 But Governor Lord Elphinstone did not think so; he wanted to know from the Board why the cost had exceeded the estimate, particularly when it had been approved by the Court of Directors in London with the proviso that the approved amount should on no account be exceeded.

In his reply, the Superintending Engineer cited the costs of two other bridges he had built to show that the costs incurred in building the Elphinstone Bridge were on the same lines.

 The extra cost incurred was only because the river was always full of water and several persons had to be employed in constantly bailing out the water to keep the coffer dams dry while raising the foundation.

 This was totally unexpected. The arguments went on for months, but in the end the matter was happily resolved to the engineer’s satisfaction.

It was in another instance too, but in this case it caused the builder of the 1805 St. George’s Bridge (now the Periyar Bridge) considerable more concern for months.

 Lt. Thomas Fraser was not only censured for the cost over-run but also had his commission and other benefits withheld. 

In this case, Fraser justified the excess expenditure by pointing out that after the foundation work was completed, he was asked by the Council to re-align the bridge. So, he once again had to sink wells for the foundation, piers and abutments.

 Further changes were ordered by the Council from time to time and he carried out the Council’s orders every time. He was therefore not responsible for the final cost — which was entirely due to his only having carried out the orders of the Council. In this case too, the arguments continued for long, but eventually Governor Lord William Bentinck accepted Fraser’s appeal and restored all his benefits.

On a third occasion, a bridge on South Beach Road needed substantial repairs. These were carried out, but a couple of years later the Military Board sought further funds to carry out additional repairs to the bridge. 

The Governor was not ready to sanction the amount until he was told why the bridge had not been regularly inspected for maintenance, who was responsible for such inspection, and “why he had not carried out his work sincerely.” What eventually happened in this instance is not known, but what is clear is that, at one time, heads of government kept a sharp eye on even comparatively minor expenditures

 But then those were more leisurely times, weren’t they, and heads of government had time on their hands.

 S Muthiah : H :19 Oct 2014

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