Linking Madras, Cuddalore, and Calcutta

The long weekend a fortnight ago had me driving off to Cuddalore, my destination being Fort St. David, the property of the Murugappa Group, which is now managed as a guesthouse. I have fond memories of the place, having stayed here earlier when it was a Murugappa guesthouse, and this sojourn was a great one too.

Fort St. David commemorates in name the fort that the British built in Cuddalore. The brainchild of Elihu Yale when he was Governor of Madras in the 1690s, the place had been eyed repeatedly by colonial forces since the early 1600s. The Dutch negotiated for it with the Nayaks of Gingee but the Portuguese would have none of it. When Gingee became a Maratha stronghold, the British proved luckier, being given as much land as could be covered by shooting cannonballs! The French, thereafter, repeatedly tried to take the place over, giving up only in the 1760s.

The commemorative stone in memory of Nettle, a dog, erected by its owner, Dr. H.E. Busteed, among the early chroniclers of colonial Calcutta | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

The colonial interest was that Cuddalore and its surroundings had plenty of textile-weaving centres. But under the British, it developed more as a military stronghold. It became a convenient bolthole when Madras fell to the French in 1746. Interestingly, while Fort St. George surrendered, Fort St. David did not, and remained the British headquarters of Madras up to as late as 1752 – three years after our city was vacated by the French. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if the British had never returned, and invested in building up Cuddalore as their capital. Much of Fort St. David was ruined during Comte de Lally’s siege of the late 1750s and today, barring three or four colonial buildings and some graveyards, there is very little to show what could have one day rivalled Madras. Cuddalore Old Town (OT), however, flourishes and has by the river a few old British warehouses, one of them being the Parry sugar warehouse, and the Christ Church, badly modernised, where Thomas Parry is buried.

Coming back to Fort St. David guesthouse, this is a 1930s art deco building, overlooking the beach. Inside are some Parry ledgers dating to the 1850s and several old maps beautifully mounted. The place itself is a haven of peace. “Don’t miss the commemorative stone let into the rear wall,” said M.M. Murugappan, former Chairman of the Murugappa Group when I called him from Fort St. David. Dating to 1862 and in Latin, it was in memory of Nettle, a dog, erected by its owner, identified by the initials HEB. Little did I know that this was none other than Dr. H.E. Busteed, among the early chroniclers of colonial Calcutta.

He was to that city what H.D. Love was to Madras, though his book, Echoes from Old Calcutta (first published in 1882) can hardly be compared to Love’s monumental Vestiges of Old Madras with its three volumes and an index added for good measure. Busteed’s work is more modest, dealing with the lives of eminent people of that city during the 18th century. It is, nevertheless, a good read. While I was familiar with his work, I never realised he had a connect to Madras and Cuddalore. It transpires that Busteed who was an MD and an MRCS, joined the Madras Medical Service in 1855 and two years later, saw active service during the First War of Indian Independence. He was then posted in 1861 as Civil Surgeon of Cuddalore, in which capacity he served till 1865. This accounts for the memorial to his dog.

In 1865, he was appointed Assistant Assay Master of the Madras Mint! I wondered as to what a surgeon would have known of metallurgy or minting coins, but apparently this was not so unusual those days. Surgeons were considered men of science who had skills in chemistry. Busteed was transferred to Calcutta as Deputy Assay Master in 1870 and there rose to become Assay Master in 1872. That he was quite good in his duties in the mint is evident from the numerous papers and articles that he wrote on assaying. In his parent service he was promoted repeatedly, no matter that he was minting coins, and retired in the 1880s with the rank of Brigade Surgeon. In 1887, his services were recognised by the awarding of the Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire. Busteed died in England on February 1, 1912. Though his links with Madras and Cuddalore were not strong, all records speak of him as belonging to the Madras Medical Service.

As for Nettle’s memorial, it was one among numerous tombstones found littering Fort St. David, early in the 1900s. It was typical of the British that they considered a memorial to a dog worthy of preservation and let it into the wall.

(Sriram V. is a writer and historian.)