Some More Lamp-posts, or Another Lamp-post Post (if you will)

The Hensley Photo Library, University of Chicago, is a rich collection of photographs of Calcutta from 1943-44. They are a delight to browse through anyway. After the lamp-post in one of the photographs caught my eye, I kept looking for more varieties in each photograph.

Yes, the sign-board says Bombay, but this is obviously from Calcutta. The archivist also says so.

The first one is of the Howrah Station. The second is at Sealdah. Are the lamp-posts different because they are meant to light up different kinds of spaces? The first sheds light on rickhsaw or other public transport stands, while the latter is street-lighting. The Sealdah Station looks very different now. I do not know how and when the transition took place. It seems Hensley may have caught another photographer in the act: what else could the person squatting in the foreground be doing?

This early morning scene echoes the lamp-post in the first photograph (in this post). You can almost smell the groggy freshness in the air. For the lamp too it seems too early to raise its head up absolutely straight. It's lazily tilted. Donkeys have become a rare sight in the city. A few days back I heard that the last donkey in Shantiniketan has died. Which broke my heart. Urbanisation and mechanisation are difficult conditions to survive in for a creature whose breeding, I suppose, came out of a largely utilitarian motive. Apart from carrying sundry load, they were also useful to dhoba-s or launderers (which may well be the subject of this photograph). They aren't very popular otherwise, are they? But they aren't even close to being endangered, and that is a relief.

The last three here are all from the Tram Terminus. The first one has two lamps to a pole, while the other two have four to a pole. The last photograph I found quite striking, what with the monsoon clouds in the background.

P. T. Nair tells us that while Harrison Road was the first to receive electric lighting around the turn of the century, it was not until 1914 that major sections of the city came to be illuminated thus. With an increase in the number of buses and trams plying the roads, the CESC started paying greater attention to street-lighting around 1927. Up until the 1950s, we are told, there were 4 classes of electric lights: i) 75 watt single lamps for very narrow passages; ii) 100 watt single lamps for lanes with little motor traffic; iii) 3-75 watt cluster lamps for roads with moderate traffic; and iv) 3-100 watt cluster lamps for major roads where the traffic was heavy. The height of the last type would range between 25 and 30 feet, and they would be separated from each other by about 150 ft.

Hope you have fun going through the rest of the photographs in the Collection.

"Sans Souci"

You may be wondering why I have so little to say that is original. The happy reason is that, contrary to expectations with which I too had set out, there is a great deal that has been written about the city. If it isn't "primary research" I usually prefer to cite or even quote from my source. Paraphrasing, unless the text itself is confusing, seems a little lame, and I can't possibly assume an authoritative voice when I'm culling facts from elsewhere.

First of all, let me share the scanned image of the daguerreotype (somewhere Plato is turning in his...grave?) of the "Sans Souci" Theatre referred to in my earlier post. ["The "Sans Souci" Theatre of Calcutta. c. 1840. Photo: Siddhartha Ghosh. The earliest known example of a daguerreotype picture taken in Calcutta, which has survived only as a reproduction."]

When I was discussing the problem (of sharing or not) with my father, he suggested that I take a look at his copy of the St Xavier's College Centenary: 1960. The first article, "From Theatre to College" offered three interesting images and a bit of history. I find the language a little difficult to follow, especially since rhetorical flourishes often get the better of clarity. Some of the historical facts are clearly presented, while others not so. For the foundation story of the college, I think it worth going back to Radharaman Mitra (earlier referred to). He tells us:

A group of English Jesuits came to Calcutta on 8 October 1834 and established on 1 July 1835 the first St Xavier's College on Portuguese Church Street. In 1838 it was shifted to 3 Park Street, to a rented house. From there it moved again to 28 Chowringhee Road, to another rented house, in January 1841.
Trouble ensued between this group and Vicar Apostolic Carew. They closed down the college and left India in 1845. In September 1849 Carew purchased the building that currently houses St Xavier's College, which earlier used to be the "Sans Souci" Theatre, on premises numbers 10 and 11. Currently this is 30 Park Street. In the next month he transferred St John's College (of his own establishment) from its Entally premises to the Park Street address. He died in 1855 and the college shut down shortly afterwards.
A renewed appeal persuaded a group of Belgian Jesuits to come and work in India. On 28 November 1859, some of them arrived in Calcutta. They established St Xavier's College on 16 January 1860. Another version claims that St John's College did not in fact shut down in 1855. It lingered on and was rechristened and inaugurated as St Xavier's College on 16 January. (My translation.)

The essay in the Centenary volume quotes one Father Shea, who describes the old theatre:

...a showy building, with all sorts of what in theatrical language are called 'properties', and something like an acre of ground. The building is oblong; a good deal of it is devoted to a very fine portico and entrance hall. The audience part has the ordinary horse-shoe wall for the support of the boxes, etc., and this cannot be got rid of. You may easily imagine how much room is thus lost. The theatre was adapted to its present purpose in the following manner. A floor was raised about 12 or 13 feet from the ground, and the regions, commonly supposed to be the abode of ghosts and blue-fire, to which wicked barons and villains in general are consigned, are now a boy's purgatory - schoolrooms and so forth.

It provides an excellent photograph(?) of the premises, apparently taken in 1846. The "Sans Souci" building is still extant - you can identify it by the columns in the front. I wonder what the towering structure we are seeing in the background is. If I'm not getting the direct all wrong, we could be looking at St Paul's Cathedral. The Cathedral, it appears, was completed in 1847, but the spire could easily have been constructed a year earlier. This of course would be the old spire, modelled on the Norwich Cathedral, which broke as a result of the earthquake in 1934. (The new one was inspired by the "Bell Harry" Tower of Canterbury Cathedral.) I can't think of any other building of similar eminence in that direction with respect to St Xavier's College.

The article also says that the good Father H. Depelchin, "that shameless beggar", turned the fortunes of the school in the mid-1860s. The next bit is only by way of annotating the very interesting photograph that follows. "A British Company of buses had been started in Calcutta. It failed for want of travelling public. Fr. Depelchin acquired three of the conveyances for the paltry sum of Rs 400/-. They began going round, morning and evening, a moving advertisement to the spirit of enterprise of St Xavier's."

The other illustration in the volume that I found rather interesting is this "Sketch of the Old "Sans Souci" Theatre, about 1850." I admit that the angle is fairly obvious for viewing a building, but you will see that it matches line for line the daguerreotype from Sri Siddhartha Ghosh's collection. Could this be a hand-drawn reproduction of a mechanically produced daguerreotype image that had been taken four years earlier?

Updates, or Filling a Few Gaps

I found a significant entry on Fenwick (about whom I had expressed curiosity earlier) in Samir Raychowdhury's Shābek Kolkatar Rastar Itihash (Kolkata: Puja Foundation, 1997).

Edward Fenwick was a fortune-hunter. After arriving in Calcutta in 1764 he found employment as a clerk with the Company. The following year he was sent to Midnapur. What he got embroiled in exactly is unknown, but for one reason or another, within a couple of years he was removed from the Treasury to the Secretary’s Office. In 1768 he was accused of passing on classified information to Mr. Bolt. Bolt wrote a book based on these facts. The allegation caused him to be sacked (Fort William and India House Letters, Vol. 5, 1767-69). After a fairly long period of joblessness he was re-employed in May 1772. His monthly salary was Rs 5. But the very next year he lost his job again. The few years of his life that can be marked off as happy were between 1775 and 1782. During this period he was a member of the Revenue Board and he was in charge of some logistics in the court of law. He was getting a salary of Rs 800 per month. Following this he joined the Provincial Council as the third member, and he was later promoted to the highest possible post in Dinajpur. He did not spend much time in Dinajpur. He was transferred to Calcutta. It was during this stay that he made his acquaintance with William Hickey. (My translation.)

The entry goes on to quote in Bangla translation from Hickey's memoirs, to which we can come later. I am paraphrasing from the same book: It appears that the Company of Cotton and Mayer used to outsource some work to Hickey, who made great profit by it. Soon the company entered naval trade with China and Malay, having purchased three ships, and having made Hickey their guarantor. Hickey learnt soon after that one of the ships had been lost at sea to a tempest and that the duo was planning a furtive escape from India. He went to court and got the two arrested. He also withdrew his signature from the guarantor's bond. Poor Fenwick arrived as the saviour and took his place. Meanwhile the said duo did make their escape, leaving Fenwick in what can only be described as a pickle. He found himself behind bars. Fenwick may also have entered into business with the Nawab of Arcot.

It was with the profits he made from these enterprises, augmented by the Company funds, that he tried to set up the Bazar. He is also to be thanked for setting up the roads that lead up to the Bazar. He was dismissed by the Company on 17 April 1795. He rapidly lost all his wealth and was rendered utterly destitute. The Company took pity on him and started giving him a small pension. In 1812 it was discovered that he had utterly lost his sanity, and the Company gave him the whole salary he was entitled to. He did not live much long after and the exact date of his death is not known.

A rather sad story there.The following is an excerpt from Memoirs of William Hickey edited by Alfred Spencer:

A fête-champetre announced as to be given by Mr. Edward Fenwick, a gentleman high in the Civil Service, entirely engaged the public attention and conversation during the greater part of the month of May. It was intended to be celebrated at his country house, situated upon the banks of the river, in Garden Reach, about five miles from Calcutta, which thentofore had been the property and place of residence of my esteemed friends Mr. and Mrs. Lacam. The gardens were to be brilliantly illuminated with many thousand coloured lamps; an eminent operator in fireworks had been brought down from Lucknow to display his talents; the company to appear in fancy dresses, those that chose it to wear masks. Ranges of tents were fixed in different parts of the gardens, wherein tables were laid covered with all the dainties the best French cooks could produce, for the accommodation of three hundred persons, besides which every room in the house was stored with refreshments of every sort and kind; different bands of martial music were stationed in several parts of the gardens, and also in the house, with appropriate and distinct performers for the dancers. The last two miles of the road were lighted up with a double row of lamps on each side, making every object clear as day. In short, nothing could exceed the splendour of the preparations for this rural entertainment.

You may want to look up the rest of Hickey's account of how he had gotten drunk at a party earlier that evening, and how he reached Fenwick's party completely sloshed, after an accident or two.

____

In other news, on my way to the West Bengal State Archives, I picked up from a College Street second-hand bookstore this Big Book with nice illustrations and photographs, titled Changing Visions, Lasting Images: Calcutta through 300 Years, edited by Pratapaditya Pal. There are several very interesting essays in the volume, including one on the Indo-American trade - which is something I am personally interested in because of my area of research. In an article by Siddhartha Ghosh, "Early Photography in Calcutta" I found a lovely photograph of the Sans Souci theatre (earlier mentioned). The caption reads: "The "Sans Souci" Theatre of Calcutta. c. 1840. Photo: Siddhartha Ghosh. The earliest known example of a daguerreotype picture taken in Calcutta, which has survived only as a reproduction."

Somewhere near Beckbagan

"Where's a camcorder when you need one?" - The Mask

There are times when one sorely misses the regular, still camera too. Part of this lack has been plugged by the cell-phone cameras. Very handy, but the quality is frustrating. The same Nokia Asha 311 that was used to click the photograph of the lamp-post had to be called in to action again while I was on my way to Peter Cat for dinner with my good friend Arnab Chakraborty. The two girls, as you can make out, were seated in this huge stage/truck. Probably on the way home, judging by the way in which they kept to one corner of it. It was a very strange spectacle. The vehicle-turned-stage. The stage-turned-vehicle. And this kid who was selling balloons of various shapes, at a traffic signal. He managed to sell two eventually: one red heart-shaped, another green spherical. I thought of cropping it at first, but then I decided that there was much going on in the frame that wasn't on my mind when I clicked the photograph.

Finick Bazar Street

The fact that the Fenwick Bazar Street exists was beyond doubt. I was positive that I had read it somewhere and even a plan of the New Market shows it running adjacent to the present-day compound. I thought I had a fair idea of where it is, but I just wanted some confirmation from the Street itself.

Fenwick's Bazar (I am yet to discover the origin of the name) used to be where the New Market is today. The New Market, of course, was built in 1874. We find some references to Fenwick's Bazar in reports through out the 19th century. It was probably demolished in favour of something more sanitised because, as I understand, it had acquired a reputation for being shabby and unclean. Fires in the area seem to have been quite common. The Asiatic Annual Register, for instance, notes in 1804 the incident of a Fire.

A fire, which at first excited considerable alarm, broke out on Saturday evening, in the neighbourhood of Fenwick's Bazar, Chouringhee. It originated, we here, [sic] from a bheesty, who was piping sorrow away, with a chillum of Bang; and carelessly laid the contents, after he had done, against a hut: however, before it could be subdued, upwards of one hundred straw and other houses, were reduced to ashes.

In November 1843 (I am not absolutely sure of the year) another conflagration commenced "at the bazar and huts immediately behind the Chowringhee-road. It was bounded on the South by Fenwick's buildings, on the north by the Jaun Bazar, on the west by the Ouchterlony monument, and on the east by Wellesly street." It appears that several hundred huts and houses were destroyed by this fire.

The 1828 map of Calcutta, prepared for the use of the Lottery Committee, surveyed by I. A. Schalch, with additions from the survey by Capt. J. Prinsep shows the Bazar. This is from a photograph I took of the map, which is there in the National Library:

It appears under controversial circumstances in a report in Allen's Indian Mail on February 24, 1873. It may be a reference to the area, not the market, and I am not at all certain of when the building was broken down. The New Market seems to have been inaugurated on January 1, 1874. The report may also have been from a different time, published on the said date. It appears that the Commissioner of Police at Calcutta, one Mr Wauchope, made a claim that "will seem to many a direct attack upon a pet article of our [British] moral creed." He argued against the notion that crime rates were directly related to presence of liquor shops, and indeed of liquor consumption. He furnishes a list of comparisons: Burra Bazar, which has 31 liquor shops has a lower crime rate compared to Colootollah, which has only 7. Colinga with 6, "has a criminal population as large in proportion as Fenwick Bazar with thirty-one shops of the same kind." He also claimed '[t]hat the most successful dacoit he ever knew "never tasted liquor"'. Is there a half-appreciative note in the way they say "most successful dacoit"?

A few days back, actually almost a week back, while I was waiting for an appointment with probably the only Churrack Sanyasi in town, I took it upon myself to find traces of the Street. I think it's a nice gesture to commemorate the Bazar with an underexposed street name. At first I couldn't see any of the houses or bigger shops which gave out their address as "Fenwick Bazar Street." There's a liquor shop right where the Street meets Lindsay Street, which gives the address as L. Lindsay Street. It could either mean 'lower' or 'little', and may actually be a legitimate street name also. I asked around a bit but no one seemed to know. May be it was a bad day for street name enthusiasts or the wise elderly. Closer inspection and a second semi-resigned walk revealed a couple of small shops which confessed to being located on the said street. They spelt it as 'Finick Bazar Street', which I later realized, is probably a transcription from Bengali of the pronunciation of 'Fenwick.'

Fenwick Bazar Street (facing Lindsay Street)