A hall no more
Your reference to Doveton Hall (Miscellany, May 2nd) made me wonder whether you could tell readers something about Dobbin Hall and whether it exists, writes J.S.Nathan. I often wish I had the facilities to dig deep enough and provide detailed answers to queries such as this. Unfortunately, the best I can do — and that too only some of the time — is to provide brief answers and hope that others will take it further.
In this case, the answer is that Dobbin Hall owes its name to James Dobbin (aka Dobbyn), an auctioneer in the city. He obtained about 20 acres in Vepery in two grants, one in 1798 and the other in 1801. He had previous to that obtained a grant of land in Perambur in 1795. In the Vepery acreage he built a garden house which took its name from him and became Dobbin Hall .
There appear to have been Dobbyns in Madras from the late 17th Century till well into the first years of the 20th Century. When James Dobbin of this lineage died in 1814, the property appears to have passed on, through perhaps another Dobbin or two, to a Lt.Col. Dobbin, to judge by the records that state that it was from him Government acquired the property to enable the Madras Veterinary School, established in 1903, to move into with its first batch of twenty students.
Dobbin Hall was a dilapidated old building at the time and the building of the Madras Veterinary College that is now seen came up in front of it on Vepery High Road. When this handsome building reflecting vestiges of the Indo-Saracenic style was ready for occupation in 1904, Dobbin Hall was put to less academic use and eventually demolished. Perhaps someone from MVC can give us more details about that. But one detail I've been able to gather is that the existing building was built by Masilamoney Mudaliar, but who was the architect?
Now all that's not very much, but I hope the postman's knock will bring in much more information.
The ‘Tamil' missionaries
The Rev. J.S.Chandler of the American Mission, Madurai, kick-started the work on the Tamil Lexicon, I had recorded in Miscellany, March 28. That mention, as well as the reference to Dr. G.U. Pope, had M.A.Nelson sending me a heap of material on the two Tamil-focused missionaries that has swelled my information on them.
Chandler, I learn, was very interested in Tamil lyrics, especially on Christian themes, and he himself wrote several, one of which is still in use in Tamil services in Protestant churches. It is titled Paavappaaril Unnatha Smaathanam . A collection of Tamil hymns titled Christiankeerthanai was first published in 1853 by a Rev.Webb. It was subsequently re-published by the Rev.Washburn in 1870. Chandler was responsible for a revised edition being brought out by the Christian Literature Society in 1922 and since then there have been several editions, revised and otherwise.
But it is to Dr. Pope of Sawyerpuram that Nelson pays greater attention.
An East India Company merchant called Samuel Sawyer was stationed in Palayamkottai where he prospered. He donated sufficient money to a group of Christians converted by Raja Clorinda (Miscellany, March 8, 2010) and who had settled south of the River Tamprabarni in the South Tiruchendur Taluk. In the face of difficulties there they wanted to move — and so used Sawyer's donation to buy 150 acres ten miles southwest of Tuticorin and north of the River Tamprabarni in 1815. When Sawyer died the next year, the villagers named their settlement Sawyerpuram. And it was to this village that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) sent Pope on his first assignment soon after arriving from England.
Pope arrived in Sawyerpuram in 1842, to establish a new headquarters of the SPG in the Madras Presidency's southern districts which it took over in 1826 after the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) decided it was too far stretched and decided to concentrate on the Presidency's northern districts. In 1843-1844 he cleared the jungle nearby and established a seminary there that flourished for several years, becoming a Second Grade College of the University of Madras.
The College was moved by Bishop Caldwell to Tuticorin, where too it struggled and was then moved to Trichinopoly where it now thrives as Bishop Heber College. Meanwhile, in Sawyerpuram, which Pope left in 1850 for Tanjore, the middle school Bishop Caldwell had left there as a substitute for the college grew into a high school by 1930. Today, Sawyerpuram, a town panchayat, has several educational institutions remembering George Uglow Pope. They are: Pope Memorial Higher Secondary School for Boys; Pope's College, a postgraduate, co-ed institution with hostel facilities; Pope's College of Engineering; and Pope's College of Education (graduate teacher training). Will Sawyerpuram one day host a Pope University?
Pope's contribution to Tamil is well-remembered, even with a statue on the Marina. But Sawyerpuram and what his mission there started is little known outside Tirunelveli District.
Coral and diamonds
A recent reference in the columns of MetroPlus to Coral Merchant's Street had me wondering how many know the origins of that name and the antecedents of those merchants.
During the early years of the East India Company sinking roots in those three square miles of ‘no man's sand' that became Madras, both Armenian and Jews (of Iberian origin but who had settled in England, Italy and Holland) were very much part of the Madras commercial scene. In fact, in 1687, there was established an association that called itself ‘The Colony of Jewish Traders of Madraspatam'. The Jews of Madras were so highly thought of by the Company that when the Corporation of Madras was established in 1688, three of its twelve aldermen were Jews. Also, the Jews were permitted to live in the Fort — unlike the Armenians — and in the 1680s there were six Jewish diamond merchants benefiting from this dispensation.
Other Jewish merchants lived in nascent Muthialpet that was developing north of the first Black Town, which was on what is now the High Court campus. To their numbers were added the Jewish merchants from the Fort after the French had quit it in 1749. The Muthialpet street on which they lived became know as Coral Merchants' Street as they imported rough coral, polished coral beads, pearls and silver and exported diamonds and other gemstones obtained from Ceylon and Burma (sapphires from the former and rubies from the latter).
But by the end of the 18th Century, the diamond business had fallen considerably and the Jews left for greener pastures and Pavalakkarar Theru ( pavalam (T) = coral) became just another New Black Town street. Then, in the late 19th-early 20th Century, another community of traders and financiers began moving into the street, the Nattukottai Chettiars. And a row of what are today called ‘row houses' came up with bars in front separating them from the street and with ‘banks' within. But post-Independence, these businesses too have virtually vanished, and though the barred houses still remain — as homes from front to back today — the only major Chettiar presence here is the viduthi (the choultry, or ‘guest-house'). And the street no longer reflects the prosperity its name was once an indicator of.
