The postman has been busy again, and this week’s column is entirely due to his bounty, the first item literally a delivery by snail mail. That letter of mid-January reached me from Geoffrey Burkhart of Tacoma Park, Maryland, U.S. What Burkhart’s interest in Madras — and this column in particular — is, I have no idea and hope to hear from him about it in due course, but meanwhile it would appear he is a regular reader of it, the way he describes me the way I like it, as a “Chronicler of Madras”, and the kind words he adds: “Thank you for the extraordinary work you do.”
He sends me two pictures, one a lovely print of the Castlets that several others had sent to me earlier and I used on August 31, 2015, but the other, a real bonanza, a picture of a tower I had never heard of before and which makes me keep repeating that I learn something new about the city every day. This picture of the tower is not of the best quality but I use it any way today because of its uniqueness. >Burkhart, however, provides the link for a better look at it (at minutes 2:48-2:49).
The Chennai Government Museum website, he goes on to tell me, states: “The library had an imposing tower 200 feet high, the highest in Madras at that time. But, in March 1897 AD, the tower was demolished as it was found to be in a precarious condition.”
Now, I had never heard of this tower before, and none of my ‘bibles’ on Madras architecture of the past make any mention of it. So, what is the story of the tower? Can former Commissioner of the Museum Kannan, who considers himself an authority on the Madras Government Museum, shed any light on this intriguing looking tower?
Harinarayana, a former Director of the Museum, wrote a brief history of that Institution, but made no mention of the tower. Time we learnt about it, particularly why it was pulled down. Given the quality of construction at the time, to be considered unstable in less than 100 years seems strange. Unless Henry Irwin, who Burkhart seems to think was responsible for its construction, did his sums wrong.
Another thought: Looking at the tower, it does bear some resemblance to Chisholm’s tower at Chepauk. Was Irwin trying to rival it?
The symbols of Freemasonry
If Burkhart’s letter was out of the blue, my second mail for the week from abroad, this time Chile, was from someone I hadn’t heard from for some time. This time, it is from an old friend of this column, Jefferis D’Angelis, who has long been on the trail of his ancestor, Madras hotelier Giacomo D’Angelis, and keeps me regularly posted on that grand old man’s doings.
The latest tidbit from Jefferis is another picture of D’Angelis Hotel, this time of the reception room. “Look carefully,” he tells me, “and you will notice that the design on the carpet features Masonic symbols”. Freemasons, it would appear, liked to introduce some form of Masonic symbolism in their homes or places of work.
To explain the hotel’s Masonic connections, Jefferis sends me the logs of the Pitt Macdonald Lodge wherein Giacomo D’Angelis figures on his initiation in March 1884, and his son Carlo appears in January 1906. Carlo D’Angelis is seen in the picture, standing before the reception desk, on the left, talking to a guest. (If the Lodge would like to see the entries, they could contact me by snail mail, care of The Hindu )
The Pitt Macdonald Lodge, the third oldest in South India, was inaugurated in September 1867, shortly after the death of the person it was named after, Major General William Pitt Macdonald, whose record in Freemasonry was far better than in the field, where he seemed to have spent much of it in military administration.
Among the leading members of the Lodge were brothers Eardley Norton, the famous lawyer, Sir Alexander Macdougall, who developed Simpson’s into one of the leaders in the transport field, T.V. Muthukrishna Iyer, a leading lawyer who was the first Indian to become a District Grand Master, Sir George Townsend Boag of the Civil Service, and James Higgs, the managing Director of Higginbotham’s.
Boag, the last British District Grand Master, became Chief Secretary of Madras, Governor of Orissa and Dewan of Cochin. His large house in T. Nagar was purchased by Kurma Venkata Reddy, who acted as Prime Minister of the Presidency in 1937. It was later bought by Sivaji Ganesan and remains in the family on the road, now no longer named after Boag but after the actor.
Norton was a member of the committee that drafted the constitution of the Indian National Congress. And, Higgs was responsible for building in the 1890s the handsome Madras headquarters of Higginbotham’s. One of its features is a magnificent winding staircase. It has been said that “nothing distinguishes Masonic architecture more than the winding staircase!”
Discovering roots
My third letter this past week has been from V. Balaraman, who quotes an article by Richard Branson of the UK’s famous Virgin Group, in which Branson states he is of Indian descent. In fact, based on the article, I would describe him as being of Madras Anglo-Indian origin.
Writing in his blog, quoted by the PR service of ‘Virgin Management’, he states, and I quote excerpts from it:
“I know just about everything there is to know about my living relatives — we’re a tight-knit bunch, who loves to share and celebrate our achievements together. Up until recently, however, I couldn’t say the same about those who came before my great-grandparents.
“That was until I sat down with historian and journalist, Henry Louis Gates Jr. to trace my roots…
“My father’s family left a paper trail that traced back to Madras in the 1700s. In 1793, my third great-grandfather, John Edward Branson, set sail from Britain to India and reached Madras… He was eventually joined by his father, my fourth great-grandfather, Harry Wilkins Branson, and by 1808, three generations of my ancestors were living in Madras…
“The paper trail showed that they moved in search of fortune, and within 10 years became successful businessmen — my great-great-great-grandfather, John, a shopkeeper and my great-great-great-great-grandfather, Harry, an auctioneer. I was terribly excited to discover that the entrepreneur gene runs deep in the Branson blood line.
“What’s more exciting is that the Madras archives, combined with analysis of my DNA, uncovered a very surprising family secret. The baptismal record of my second great-grandmother Eliza Reddy strangely didn’t list her mother. Analysis of my DNA revealed that the reason for this was because my third great-grandmother was Indian. Yes, it turns out I’m part Indian.”
Now, that’s one more name to the list of those of Anglo-Indian descent who have gone far and achieved much. Meanwhile, I hope some computer wizard will trace a Branson connection with Madras though the old Madras Almanacs .
I am also intrigued by the second great-grandmother’s surname, Reddy? Of Indian descent in the male line too? If so, the Reddys too have entrepreneurial genes.
