Did the Heritage Conservation Committee approve the demolition of a listed building? Did an unreported fire engulf its interior? Did it mysteriously collapse on its own? I refer to Binny & Co’s headquarters on Armenian Street, a heritage building its owners have flattened.
This building was memorial to the second oldest major business house in Madras, to the first major industrial establishment in the South, the Buckingham Mills that went on stream in 1878, and to the birth of the labour movement in India, the Madras Labour Union for Textile Workers started in 1918 in that mill. As solid a memorial as you would wish, its significance will now only be a memory, one soon forgotten by most without the evidence of a standing edifice.
When the building was built is not very clear, but Binny’s, its origins in 1799/1800, has been on this site since 1804. It bought a house and grounds here then for 10,000 pagodas (about ₹ 35,000 at the time). Fifteen years later, it bought about 13,000 sq ft to its North, on Errabalu Chetty Street, for 25,000 pagodas. It next bought another house and grounds, about 5,500 sq ft, on Armenian Street, for ₹1,800. Finally, it bought land, building, outhouses and stables (leading to the area being called ‘The Stables’ till the Inchcape Group sold the company to local interests in 1981-82) on Errabalu Chetty Street in 1869, about 4,500 sq ft for ₹ 2,800. In 1906, it was recorded that Binny’s property included “Office premises, godowns, stables including office premises previously occupied by G N Deane & Co on Maclean Street…” Thus, the Binny property was bounded on three sides by Errabalu Chetty Street, Armenian Street and Maclean Street. It may have even stretched to Sembudoss Street. It had all been bought from Armenians. There is no record when the building we knew was built, but my guess is it was development of existing buildings post-1819, with the Art Deco look added in the 1930s.
All this did not include John Binny’s private residence where the Imperial/ later Connemara Hotel came up. His from 1815, he lived there till 1821 when he died. The firm then maintained it till 1867. The road that fronts it is still Binny Road. But there’s a second Binny Road off Cathedral Road on what was the Great Choultry Plain. A vast garden here with a magnificent house called Waterton , added substantially to Binny’s holdings. Beside the house, the Chairman’s, were raised houses for the Directors. Greystoke, Westbourne, Hornton and Haisboro no longer exist.
The Waterton property was sold in 1959-60, the main house itself going for ₹330,000, ₹260,000 more than its original price. The other houses went for similar prices, the Directors moving into the Boat Club area, Pugh’s (Pois) Gardens developing in their stead.
Medical milestone in Triplicane
Regularly enquiring whether I can’t get someone tracing a significant Triplicane doctor’s personal history is Dr A Raman, my Australian correspondent. He’s once again posed the question on the good doctor Mohideen (aka Modeen) Sheriff. All I can say for the nonce is, ‘Anwar, guide to Triplicane, where are you?’
Sheriff received the ‘Graduate of the Madras Medical College’ degree, joined Government service and, in time, became the medical officer of the Triplicane Dispensary (I wonder what’s on its site today). Appointed a member of the Madras Working Committee charged with sending exhibits from the Presidency to an international exhibition being held in Calcutta from December 1883 to March 1884 (with ₹200 granted him towards expenses), he sent 954 “natural materials of medical importance” with a catalogue.
This was the starting point for what he became known, the Materia Medica of Madras which Government published in 1891, shortly after his death. In his Introduction, he wrote that the medicinal properties of the drugs listed were from testing their efficacy on patients at the Triplicane Dispensary. He added that he had over a hundred patients visiting daily, giving him ample opportunity to test the drugs. Besides the extensive details about the drugs, he offered a glossary of the drugs in 17 languages, including German, French, Sanskrit, Burmese and Sinhalese. Sheriff, who retired in 1889, was remembered in the Mohideen Sheriff Memorial Prize (value ₹38 ½) given to the best “Muhammadan student in Madras Medical College” in Materia Medica and Therapeutics. It could be awarded as books, surgical instruments or a medal.
Sheriff earlier made significant contributions to research by Dr Edward John Waring who wrote the renowned Pharmacopoeia of India (1868). Waring’s initial work was in Burma and then when Resident Surgeon of Travancore and physician to Maharaja Bala Rama Varma (aka Ayilyam Tirunal) in 1860. His consequent Remarks on theUse of Some of the Bazaar Medicines and Common Medicinal Plants in India was published by the Government Press, Trivandrum, in 1860, with the English having alongside a Tamil translation. The book’s fifth and last edition appeared in 1897.
It should be noted that in the 19th Century, the compositions of medicines — materia medica — were an important part of the medical syllabus because, in many places, the medical officer was also compounder and dispenser.
The chronicler of Madras that is Chennai tells stories of people, places, and events from the years gone by, and sometimes from today
