The Connolly legacy

June 26, 2017 07:42 am | Updated 09:47 pm IST

When Dr Sarada Menon’s name cropped up in a recent conversation, thoughts naturally turned to the Institute of Mental Health, Kilpauk, whose first woman Superintendent she was. But of its beginnings, little seemed to be known; a wing of General Hospital, was the general consensus.

There’s a grain of fact in that, for it was an 18th Century Government Assistant Surgeon who first showed interest in mental health. Valentine Connolly arrived to join the Madras Medical Service in 1788. In 1794, he offered Government ‘Proposals for Establishing in the Presidency a Hospital for Insane Patients’. Struck by the violence indulged in by those of unsound mind, he suggested they be restrained in a separate facility. His proposal was for Europeans and those called East Indians (later, Anglo-Indians), not Indians.

 

Connolly offered to build such a ‘home’, at his own expense, and have in it “16 airy apartments”. It would be in ample garden space protected by a high wall. Government backed this private venture and gave him 45 acres on nominal rent. And so began Connolly’s Mental Asylum in 1794, a business venture in Locock’s Gardens, near today’s Kelly’s.

When Connolly left India c.1800, the asylum passed on to successive buyers till 1803 when a Dr Dalton acquired it and expanded it for 50 inmates. ‘Dalton’s Mad House’, as it became known, remained in his family till 1871 when Government took it over, moving it into new buildings in its present spaciousness in Kilpauk.

Many original buildings of the Mental Asylum remain in the Institute of Mental Health, one of Connolly’s legacies to Madras.

 

His other legacy was six sons who all served the British establishment in India. I am indebted to US-based ‘Maddy’ (Manmadhan Ullattil) who tracks South Indian history and keeps me posted from time to time with his findings. On the Connolly brothers he reports:

William James arrived in India in 1822 as a Writer and rose to be a Collector in what are Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Capt. Arthur explored Central Asia, where, disguised as an Afghan, he became ‘Khan Ali’, transforming his surname. He, it was said, initiated ‘The Great Game’ and paid for it, murdered in captivity in Bokhara.

Capt. Edward Barry, another explorer, was a sniper’s victim in Afghanistan and Capt. John Balfour died in captivity in Kabul.

It was Henry Valentine (Miscellany, August 20, 2012) who got Maddy interested in the family. Henry Connolly joined the Madras Civil Service in 1824 and rose to be Collector of Malabar (then in the Madras Presidency).

He was responsible for developing the Nilambur teak forests, had the Connolly Canal built, improved the lot of the untouchable forest tribals, the Nayadis, as well as conditions in the Laccadives (Lakshadweep), and was hoping to start a collegiate school in Calicut when he fell a victim to the Moplah Rebellion in 1855.

Maddy writes that he’s been unable to trace the sixth brother, except to learn he too served in India.

* * *

A park with two histories

What’s the name of the park where the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s formation was announced, asked the quizmaster. Arignar Anna Poonga, piped up one voice. No, Sir, Robinson Park, another challenged. The quizmaster was left scratching his head, unnecessarily if he wanted technical exactitude.

It was in Robinson Park, Washermenpet, that Annadurai publicly announced the DMK’s formation on September 17, 1949. The park was twenty years later named Arignar Anna Poonga.

 

William Rose Robinson of the Madras Civil Service acted as Governor of Madras in 1875, but needs remembering not for that. He was the ‘Father of the Madras Police’, appointed Inspector General of Police of the Presidency, the first to hold such rank in India. He was responsible for organising what was described as the “best police force in the whole of India.”

Robinson was chairman of the committee Governor Lord George Harris formed in 1854 to streamline existing policing arrangements (in place from 1797). In 1857 the East India Company approved the scheme. Robinson was appointed Chief of the Madras Presidency Police in May 1858.

When his plan became the Madras Police Act XXIV in September 1859 — one of the first actions of the Crown after taking over from the Company — Madras became the first province with a formal system of policing. Under the Act, there was to be an Inspector General of Police, the honour going to Robinson. Under him there was for each district a Superintendent of Police with a force comprising Inspectors, Head Constables and Constables. Robinson served as IGP till 1867. Just before he left Madras in 1879, he laid the foundation stone for a park to be developed from a botanical garden gifted to the Madras Corporation by A Armoogam Mudaliar (Miscellany, July 23, 2012). That Park was named after Robinson.

* * *

Preferred contact and acknowledgement

Shantha Mohan (Miscellany, June 19) writes: “To receive information from readers, I would rather they used Shantha_rm@yahoo.com or https://www.facebook.com/cegwomen. Also, the group picture was from the Society of Women Engineers’ National Records, Walter P Reuther Library and Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University.

And for more they could see: https://mathisarovar.com/2017/05/20/love-of-electrical-engineering-was-in-her-blood-lalitha-rao-the-first-indian-woman-engineer/”

The chronicler of Madras that is Chennai tells stories of people, places and events from the years gone by and, sometimes, from today.

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