“I can barely see the harbour pier in your picture with >Miscellany, June 1st . Can’t you do better than that?” writes S. Anantham. I certainly can, and offer him not one but three pictures today.
Talk of Madras getting a safe man-made harbour goes back to as early as 1770, Warren Hastings, then Second in Council, recommending that a man-made harbour be developed for the city. And in making that proposal he suggested, “I have conceived it possible to carry out a Causeway or a pier into the sea beyond the Surf, to which boats might come and land their goods or passengers without being exposed to the Surf.” The suggestion was to be repeated several times thereafter but nothing came of it till 1857 when the East India Company’s Court of Directors accepted a plan by the London firm, Saunders and Mitchell, to build an iron screw-pile pier in Madras, jutting perpendicularly out into the sea from what was called North Beach.
Governor Charles Trevelyan screwed down the first pile in 1859 and the 1,000 feet long, 40 feet broad pier with a ‘T’-head 160 feet by 40 feet was inaugurated for use on December 16, 1861. My first picture, from the Frith Collection, is of that pier, with just a few cranes on it and sailing ships awaiting their turn.
The 1861 pier was built with no protection whatsoever from the vagaries of Nature and the disturbances of the sea. Given the uncertainty of conditions on the Madras coast, something was bound to happen sooner or later. And it did.
A cyclone on June 6, 1868 damaged this pier and another cyclone on May 2, 1872 wrecked it. A barge fouled the central part of the pier and the piles began to give way, and through this was pushed the barge by the surging surf which kept going till a gap of almost 250 feet was created. The pier was out of operation for 15 months.
By 1874, the pier was made operational again and that is my second picture, showing the broad top surface and more cranes. My third picture probably dates to the 1880s, when steamships began to dominate the seas, and faster passage necessitated more cranes for increased tonnage of goods. By then, two breakwaters on either side of the pier and curving in to face each other across a 500-feet entrance had been built to create a somewhat protected harbour. Work on it had started on December 15, 1875 and, constantly disrupted by Nature’s fury, was completed only in October 1881. That date is reckoned the beginning of Madras Harbour that has grown into the Port of Chennai.
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The club on the beach
Have you heard of the Radical Reform Club, I was asked the other day. And as so often happens, I had to confess my ignorance. And so I began another search through my library, aided only by the hint that it had something to do with Subramania Bharati ( >Miscellany, June 22 ).
The Club, I found, was not a formal club, but a gathering of kindred souls who grouped around Subramania Bharati shortly after he arrived in Madras from Madurai to join the Swadesamitran . Whether the group gave itself the name or whether its detractors, the majority in the Madras of the times, did, I’m not very clear. But it was a reflection of the element of free thinking they espoused in wishing to bring down the deeply entrenched social barriers of the time.
Social reform was their aim and the uplift of the oppressed society all around them. They came from all castes. They were not just writers and thinkers. They included businessmen, teachers, lawyers and other professionals. Among them were Chakkarai Chettiar and V.O. Chidambaram, Bharati and another Brahmin or two who were condemned by fellow-Brahmins for not only mixing with people of all castes but also eating with them.
The focus of the group’s attention was Bharati. He spoke fervently of India needing to be free, he spoke in lecture mode on what was happening in the world, and he mesmerised them with his songs. Every evening was a delightful exchange of intellectual thought, dominated, however, by the poet who was only 22 at the time.
Offering space to the Club for its gatherings was Ganesh & Co, coffee merchants. But more often they met on the Marina. And there Bharati sang, often composing on the spot, as others gathered to listen. It was on this beach that in September 1905 he sang his first patriotic song after the partitioning of Bengal was announced, ‘Long may united Bengal live!’ When it was published in the Swadesamitran the next day it caused Bharati to be looked at in a new light.
The Swadesamitran connection has, however, made me long wonder how much of an influence G. Subramania Aiyer’s thinking had on Bharati. When Aiyer parted ways in 1898 with M. Veeraraghavachariar and The Hindu they had founded, their differences of opinion over the ideas of social reform Aiyer preached in the newspaper had much to do with it. Subramania Aiyer sought to raise the age of marriage, he advocated widow remarriage, he wished a better place in society for those who were then called ‘Untouchables’, he wanted the abolition of caste; and a ban on nautch parties.
Subramania Aiyer had practised what he preached. His eldest daughter, a virgin widow at 13, he got remarried. When the child of a widow who had remarried died and no purohit in the area would come to officiate over the funeral rites, he sent his own purohit . And he had placed an advertisement in The Hindu that read ‘Wanted Virgin Widows to Marry’. All this could well have influenced Bharati’s ideas on societal behaviour, but the two differed on the path to freedom. “Peaceful but tireless and unceasing struggle,” was the way to freedom was Aiyer’s view for most of his life. That was not the Bharati way. I’m no expert on Bharati, I hope to hear from some of them.
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Mystery in the Nilgiris
Christopher Penn, writing to me from England, says that in my reference to his book on the Nicholas Brothers and A.T.W. Penn ( >Miscellany, May 11 ) I missed an opportunity to relate an intriguing story that had the whole Madras Presidency of the time following it closely. Yes, it’s a story not without mystery, so here goes…
Albert Penn, who had worked with the Nicholas Brothers both in Madras and Ootacamund, first ran their Branch in Ooty and then struck out on his own. The Nicholas Brothers’ studio in Ooty was both office and home for Penn in October 1874 when tragedy struck his family. His third son, Cuthbert James (Dotts to all), just 18 months old, was found dead, lying with some chemical crystals on and around him. He apparently had swallowed several of them. But at his age, how was he able to reach the chemical which, it was later stated, was “a corrosive substance found in a photographer’s studio”? Certainly the studio stocked numerous dangerous chemicals, but they would normally have been locked. So how did Dotts get access to the poison he had swallowed?
All Ooty accepted it as a tragedy, “readily explicable in the Penn home.” But not the child’s hysterical mother, Elizabeth (Zillie) Penn, a highly strung young woman. She accused the child’s ayah, 16-year-old Mary Anne, of murdering her child, and the ayah’s aunt of abetting her. Despite a lack of any evidence, Mary Anne and her aunt were taken into custody. After the report of the Chemical Examiner was received from Madras — that the “contents of the prisoners’ pockets were not identical with the crystals that are alleged to have caused the death of this child” — the aunt was set free, but Mary Anne was committed for trial at the Sessions Court on a charge of murder.
The trial caused “a considerable sensation”. Particularly after it was reported that the Assessors had brought in a verdict of ‘not guilty’. Judge Cockerell did not agree with the verdict, “and in the exercise of his discretionary power, sentenced the prisoner to death.” Another reporter present wrote, “Everyone had been surprised by the verdict and when it was pronounced a groan was perfectly audible throughout the court, not only from the natives but also from the Europeans.”
A public subscription enabled a lawyer in Madras to be engaged and an appeal made to the High Court, supported by a petition signed by hundreds of sympathisers. The High Court’s verdict was reported thus: “The Ooty Poisoning Case: Their Lordships the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Holloway have reversed the judgment of the Lower Court in this case, and ordered the acquittal of the prisoner Mary Anne.”
Zillie Penn refused to accept the verdict and had her husband offer a reward of Rs.1,000 (a huge sum for the time) to anyone who would “provide information as shall lead to a conviction of the real murderers.” But despite the tempting nature of the sum offered, no one responded. However, six months later, Mary Anne died, cause of death unknown!
