The Story of Madras Part 2 – White Town, Black Town, and the Wall

This is Part 2 of an eight-part series retelling Glyn Barlow’s 1921 book The Story of Madras. Catch up with Part 1: How Madras Began first.

White Town and Black Town

When an English colony had settled down in Fort St. George, it was only to be expected that a town would spring up outside. The personal necessities of the numerous colonists had to be supplied, and purveyors and bazaarmen and workmen made themselves readily available for the supply. The requirements in respect of the Company’s mercantile business were yet greater.

The Company’s agents wanted not only native employees in their office–‘dubashes’ and ‘shroffs’ and clerks and interpreters and porters and peons, but they also wanted wholesale buyers of the cloth and other articles that they imported from England for sale, and also merchants who could supply them with large quantities of the Indian wares that the Company exported to England; and they were able to get the men that they wanted.

A crowd attracts a crowd; and when once a town has begun to grow, it goes on growing of its own accord; and ten years after the acquisition of Madras, the population of the town was estimated at as many as 15,000 souls.

The Fort itself, moreover, had to be enlarged; for the growth of the Company’s business meant that more and more factors and writers had to be brought out from England, and more and more warehouses had to be provided for the multiplied wares; and, moreover, the increasing lawlessness of the times necessitated a larger garrison.

Outside the Fort, Indian and other immigrants flocked from near and far to settle down within the Company’s domains, looking for profit under the white men’s protection; and, with their enterprising spirit, they played no small part in the development of Madras.

The town that grew up outside the little fort was divided into two sections–‘the White Town’ and ‘the Black Town.’ The boundaries of White Town corresponded roughly with what are now the boundaries of Fort St. George itself. The original Black Town–‘Old Black Town’–covered what is now the vacant ground that lies between the Fort and the Law College, and included what are now the sites of the Law College and the High Court.

The inhabitants of White Town included any British settlers not in the Company’s service whose presence the Company approved, also all approved Portuguese and Eurasian immigrants from Mylapore, and a certain number of approved Indian Christians. White Town indeed was sometimes called the ‘Christian Town.’ Black Town was the Asiatic settlement.

The great majority of the original Indian settlers were not Tamilians but Telugus–written down as ‘Gentoos’ in the Company’s Records.

Streets with a History

The Company’s agents encouraged people of various races to reside in Madras; and the names of some of the streets and districts of the town are interesting testimonies as to the variety of the people who came.

Armenian Street–which began as an Armenian burial-ground is an example. Armenians from Persia, like their fellow-countrymen the Parsees, have a racial gift for commerce; and Armenian merchants had been in India long before the English arrived.

Enterprising Armenian merchants settled in Madras in its early days to trade with the English colonists, and the Company’s agents were glad to have as middlemen such able merchants who were in close touch with the people of the land.

The most celebrated of the earlier Armenians in Madras was Peter Uscan, Armenian by race but Roman Catholic in religion, who lived in Madras for more than forty years, till his death there in 1751, at the age of seventy. He was a rich and public-spirited merchant.

He built the Marmalong Bridge over the Adyar river, on one of the pillars of which a quaint inscription is still to be read, and he left a fund for its maintenance; he also renewed the multitude of stone steps that lead up to the top of St. Thomas’s Mount. His inscribed tomb is to be seen in the churchyard of the Anglican Church of St. Matthias, Vepery, which in olden days was the churchyard of a Roman Catholic chapel.

Within the last half-century the Armenian community in Madras has been rapidly declining, as the result, probably, of inability to cope with the hustling style of commercial competition in these latter days; and only a very few representatives of the race are now to be seen in the city.

In Mint Street there is a small enclosure which is the remains of what was once a Jewish cemetery of considerable size; and the graves that are still to be seen are interesting reminders of the fact that in bygone times there was a Hebrew colony in Madras. In more than one of the Company’s old records the Jews in Madras are referred to as being rich men, some of whom held positions of high civic authority.

Some of them were English Jews, and others were Portuguese; and most of them were diamond merchants, on the look-out for diamonds from the mines of Golconda, which were formerly very productive. The English Jews exported diamonds to England, and imported silver and coral to Madras; coral was in great demand in India, and was sent out by Jewish firms in London.

There is still a ‘Coral Merchants’ Street’ in Madras, a continuation of Armenian Street, and it is a living reminder of the old Jewish colony. The Golconda mines eventually ceased to be productive, and Jewish diamond merchants are no longer to be seen in the city, and the Jewish colony has long since disappeared.

Jews are notorious all the world over as money-lenders, and it may perhaps be wondered why none of them survived as money-lenders in Madras; but the fact that Coral Merchants’ Street is now the habitat of Nattukottai Chetties, who are past-masters in the art of money-lending, suggests that even the Jews were unable to compete with Madras sowcars in the business of usury, and that the Chetties displaced the Jews who used to live in the street.

The little Jewish cemetery in crowded Mint Street is an interesting spot. One of the antique tomb-stones has been caught in the branch of a tree and has been lifted high in air, and is a quaint sight; and the deserted little Hebrew graveyard itself is symbolic of the dispersion of the ancient people.

It is a curious fact that the Company’s employees in South India never spoke of Indian Mohammedans as Mohammedans or as Moslems or as Mussalmans, but always as ‘Moors.’ It is thus that the name of ‘Moor Street’ is to be accounted for.

The original ‘Moors Street’ was a street in which Mohammedans used to live, and the fact that one particular street in a large city should have borne such a name is evidence of another fact, namely, that in the earlier years of Madras very few Mohammedans resided in the town.

It should be remembered that Madraspatnam, Triplicane, Egmore, and the other hamlets that went to make up the city of Madras were all of them Hindu villages; and it was only now and again that Mohammedans, in some capacity or another, found their way into the town. In the earlier years of Madras a single mosque sufficed for all the few Mohammedans therein.

The mosque was located in ‘Moors Street’ in old Black Town, a street that was the predecessor of the ‘Moor Street’ of to-day. It was not till nearly fifty years after the acquisition of the site of Madras that a second mosque was built–in Muthialpet; and these two small mosques supplied Mohammedan requirements for many years.

The fact is that Madras was so frequently troubled by successive Mohammedan enemies–the King of Golconda; Da-ud Khan, Nawab of the Carnatic; Haidar Ali, Sultan of Mysore; his son Tipu, and others–that the Company was disposed to regard all ‘Moors’ with mistrust, so much so that they discouraged Mohammedan residents; and a measure was passed with the special intention ‘to prevent the Moors purchasing too much land in the Black Town.’ There are large crowds of Mohammedans in Madras now, grouped especially in Chepauk and the adjoining Triplicane and Royapettah; and this is due to the fact that in later days Nawab Walajah of Arcot, who was friendly to the English, came and settled down in Madras.

He built Chepauk Palace for his residence, and the many Mohammedans who followed him into the city formed the nucleus of a large Mohammedan colony.

The name ‘China Bazaar’ appears early in the Madras Records; and it would seem to have been the place where Chinese crockery was on sale. Whether or not the salesmen were Chinese immigrants I cannot say; but the fact that another street in Madras bears the name of ‘Chinaman Street’ suggests that there was at one time a colony of pig-tailed yellow-men in the city.

The supposition is not unlikely, for China was included within the sphere of the Company’s commercial operations, with Madras as the head-quarters of the trade, and ships of the Company plied regularly between China and Madras.

Tea was one of the articles of trade, but Chinese crockery was in great demand in India, and ship-loads of cheap China bowls and plates and dishes were imported; and valuable specimens of Chinese porcelain were highly esteemed by wealthy Indians–so much so that it is on record that one of the Moghul emperors had a slave put to death for having accidentally broken a costly China dish which the emperor particularly admired.

As the Company’s trade was very largely in cloth, it can be understood that the Company’s agents were eager to induce spinners and weavers to settle in Madras, so that cloth might be bought for the Company at the lowest possible prices from the weavers direct.

Elihu Yale, who was one of the early Governors of the Fort, imported some fifty weaver-families and located them in ‘Weavers’ street’, the street that is now known as Nyniappa Naick Street, in Georgetown.

Some twenty-five years later, Governor Collet established a number of imported weavers in the northern suburb of Tiruvattur, in a village that was given the name ‘Collet Petta’ in the Governor’s honour–a name that degenerated into ‘Kalati Pettah’–‘Loafer-land’–its present appellation.

There was still a demand for more weavers, and eventually a large vacant tract was marked out as a ‘Weavers’ Town,’ under the name of Chindadre Pettah–the modern Chintadripet. In order to attract weavers, houses were built at the Company’s expense, which weavers were permitted to occupy as hereditary possessions.

It was formally decreed that “None but Weavers, Spinners, and other persons useful in the Weaving trade, Painters (i.e. designers of patterns for chintz), Washers (bleachers), Dyers, Bettleca-merchants (beetle-sellers), Brahmins and Dancing women, and other necessary attendants on the pagoda (erected in the settlement) shall inhabit the said town.” In Chintadripet to-day there are still many spinners and weavers; and one of the sights in Chintadripet–growing gradually more rare–is the spectacle of primitively-clad urchins or grown men spinning in the streets with primitive gear and in primitive fashion; and it is interesting to recall the fact that this has been going on in Chintadripet for nearly two centuries–an industry which the Company established.

Washermanpet is another such locality. It was not so called, as many people imagine, for being a land of dhobies (male laundresses). In the Company’s vocabulary a ‘washerman’ was a man who ‘bleached’ new-made cloth; and the Company employed a number of bleachers. The bleaching process needed large open spaces–washing-greens–on which the cloth could be laid out in the sun to be bleached; and Washermanpet covered a considerable area.

A great many more of the streets and districts of Madras have history in their names; but the few that we have dealt with suffice to exemplify the manner of the expansion of the city of Madras.

We can picture the rustic suppliers crowding into the city to sell the produce of their fields; we can picture the humble weavers migrating into the city with their wives and their children, and with their pots and their pans and their quaint machines, in response to the Company’s tempting invitation; we can picture the small tradesmen and the small mechanics setting up their humble shops in the new city in which they believed that fortunes were to be made.

And in the higher grades of life we can picture the grave Armenian merchants, the submissive Jews, the mistrusted ‘Moors,’ and others seeking interviews with Stuart or Georgian-garbed factors of the Company, and eager all of them to turn the Company to profitable account.

The Wall

Remnants of the Wall

Skirting a thoroughfare in Old Jail Street, in North Georgetown, is still to be seen a part of ‘the Wall’ that protected Black Town in bygone days. This interesting remnant of the Wall of Madras might before long have been levelled to the ground, either by successive monsoons or by philistine contractors in want of ‘material;’ but, with a happy regard for a relic of Old Madras, the Madras Government have recently undertaken the task of preserving the ruin, which they have officially declared an ‘historic memorial.’

The ‘Wall of Madras’ is worthy of a meditative visit, but, in order that the meditation may be on an historic basis, it is necessary to know something about the Wall itself.

Black Town Left Unprotected

We have seen that when the Company established themselves at Madras, in 1639, they first built a small fort for the protection of themselves and their goods. Around the walls of the Fort a number of Christians–English and Portuguese and Eurasians–settled down, and what was called ‘White Town’ came into being. Within a term of years this White Town was itself enclosed within fortified walls, which were finally identical with the wall round Fort St. George to-day. There was thus ‘a fort within a fort;’ but in course of time the inner wall was pulled down.

Immediately outside the northern wall of White Town lay Black Town, inhabited by Indians–employees and purveyors of the Company, as well as merchants, shop-keepers, industrialists, and the rest. It should be borne in mind that the site of this original Black Town was altogether different from the site of the later Black Town, the ‘Georgetown’ of to-day. Old Black Town, as already explained, extended from the northern wall of the Fort to what is now called the Esplanade Road, and it covered the ground that is now taken up by the Wireless Telegraph enclosure, the grounds of the High Court, and those of the Law College.

Black Town was at first without any wall, and, as the times were unsettled, the place was exposed to the serious danger of being raided by any adventurous band of marauders. Very soon, however, a beginning was made of enclosing the town with a mud wall; and in the reign of Queen Anne a wall was built with masonry. Meanwhile, moreover, numerous houses and streets had sprung up outside the wall, on the site of the Georgetown of to-day.

The French Capture Madras

In 1746 the French captured Fort St. George; and they destroyed not only the Black Town Wall but also Black Town itself. It was a disastrous episode in the history of Madras.

For six years the English and the French had been at war in Europe, and the relations between the English and French colonists in India were naturally strained; but they were settlers within the dominions of Indian rulers, and, although both the English and the French had ships and soldiers for the protection of their settlements, they realized that they were not at liberty to make war upon each other.

The settlers, moreover, were employees of mercantile companies, working for dividends; and war, with its calamitous expenditure, was not within their design. But Dupleix, the talented French Governor of Pondicherry, had ambitious ideas for the extension of French influence in India, and, in defiance of Indian rulers, war broke out.

In the beginning there were several engagements at sea between a French squadron under Labourdonnais and an English squadron under Captain Peyton. The English squadron was worsted, and had to put into Trincomalee Harbour, in Ceylon, to refit.

Thereupon Labourdonnais, after making quick preparations at Pondicherry, sailed for Madras; and the alarm in the Fort and in the city must have been great when his ships appeared off the coast and proceeded to bombard the settlement. His guns, however, did but little damage, and the citizens woke up the next morning to find, to their great content, that the enemy had sailed away during the night.

Meanwhile Captain Peyton, having repaired his ships, was unaware of what had happened at Madras, and sailed from Ceylon to Bengal, without touching at Fort St. George. Possibly he was lured to Bengal by bogus messages of French origin; for, as soon as he was out of the way, Labourdonnais reappeared off Madras, better prepared than before.

Having succeeded in landing a considerable force, he erected batteries on shore and from various points he bombarded White Town, which was now the actual Fort St. George. At the end of an unhappy seven days the garrison capitulated.

The French marched into the Fort, and all the English residents, civil and military–including the Governor and the Members of Council, and also Robert Clive, who was then a young clerk–were sent to Pondicherry as prisoners of war.

For nearly three years the French flag flew over Fort St. George, until, in accordance with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, made between the combatants in Europe, Madras was restored to the Company.

During their occupation the French had made great changes. Feeling the necessity of strengthening their position, their military commanders realized what had apparently not been recognized by the Company’s employees, untrained in war–namely that a weak-walled native town lying right against the northern wall of Fort St. George was a serious danger.

The houses offered convenient cover for any enemies that might attack the Fort; and, moreover, any disaffected or venal townsman was in a position to give the assailants valuable help. The French Governor set himself, therefore, to the deliberate destruction of Black Town. He first destroyed the Town Wall, and then–for a distance of 400 yards from the northern wall of White Town, or the present Fort St. George–he demolished every house.

The area that is now represented by the Wireless Telegraph Station and the grounds of the High Court thus became an open space. Meanwhile they constructed a moat and glacis round the walls of White Town, which, with certain alterations, are the moat and glacis of Fort St. George to-day.

The Records express the melancholy interest with which the Company’s employees, when they re-entered Madras, took note of the changes that the enemy had made in the familiar settlement. The Councillors apparently conceived that it was in a wanton spirit of destruction that the greater part of Black Town had been wiped out; for they formally decided that the streets that had been destroyed should be rebuilt.

It may be supposed however, that their military advisers counselled them otherwise; for, so far from the old houses being rebuilt, those that had been left standing were destroyed. The open space was allowed to remain; and ‘New Black Town’–the modern ‘Georgetown’–began to be developed.

It continued to be called ‘Black Town’ until the visit of the Prince of Wales (afterwards King George V) to Madras in 1906 when it was formally re-named ‘Georgetown’–ostensibly in Prince George’s honour, but in reality to meet the wishes of a number of the residents who sought an opportunity of getting rid of what they regarded–quite reasonably–as an objectionable name for the locality in which their lot was cast.

The disappearance of the historic name is a matter for historic regret, but a concession had to be made to the intelligible wishes of residents.

Strengthening the Defences

The Company, bearing in mind that the French had been able to capture Madras, realized that it was necessary to strengthen the defences of Fort St. George and also to provide adequate protection for the new native city that had grown up outside the Fort’s protective walls and was absolutely without defence.

The defences of the Fort were taken in hand at once, though the work was by no means completed; and the Directors in England readily sanctioned the construction of a wall round New Black Town.

It was well that the security of the Fort was looked to without any long delay; for in 1758, a large French army under Count Lally besieged the Fort again–but so unsuccessfully that, after sixty-seven days of persistent endeavour, they beat a sudden retreat.

It was a good many years, however, before the building of the wall round Black Town was taken seriously in hand–and then only because the Company had been given a succession of sharp warnings that it was absolutely necessary that new Black Town should be protected.

The French themselves had given the first warning during the siege under Count Lally; for, although they were powerless against the Fort, they were able to enter Black Town without opposition, and they made use of some of the houses for the purpose of the siege.

The next warning was given a few years later when Tipu, the son of Haidar Ali, Sultan of Mysore, after ravaging the country round Madras, came so near to the city itself that parties of his horsemen were scampering about in the suburb of Chintadripet. Tipu’s raid induced the Company to bring forth the approved but long-shelved plans for a wall round Black Town; but there was still much more discussion than work.

The Company needed yet another awakening; and they got a stern one two years later. We quote the story from the Company’s official records, published by the Madras Government. It is contained in a minute in the official Diary of Fort St. George, dated the 29th of March, 1769, which runs as follows:–

About 8 o’Clock this morning several Parties of the Enemy’s (Haidar Ali’s) horse appeared in the Bounds of this Place at St. Thome and Egmore, from which latter place some guns were fired at them…. At eleven o’Clock a fellow was caught plundering at Triplicane and brought into Town, who gave Intelligence that Hyder himself was on the other side of St. Thome with the greatest part of his horse. In the afternoon Advice came that the Enemy’s horse were moving from St. Thome round to the Northward with a design, as was supposed, to make an attempt on the Black Town.

It would have been difficult to have defended the unwalled town; and on the following day the Council of Fort St. George sent Mr. DuPre, Chief Councillor and succeeding Governor, to Haidar Ali’s camp, on the other side of the Marmalong Bridge, to come to terms with the invader; and within three days a treaty had been made. The treaty, said Mr. DuPre, writing to a friend, “will do us no honor: yet it was necessary, and there was no alternative but that or worse.”

After this humiliation the building of the Wall was regarded as a pressing necessity; and within a year the work was practically finished.

Haidar Ali’s Raid

Corner of the Medical School built into a portion of the Black Town Wall. It was well indeed that the work was done; for a few years afterwards, on the 10th of August, 1780, Haidar’s cavalry raided San Thome and Triplicane, killing a number of people; and the terror in Black Town was so great that crowds of the inhabitants took flight.

Fortunately, however, the Governor was able to issue the following notification for the reassurance of the public:–‘A sufficient number of guns have been mounted on the Black Town wall,’ and ‘nothing has been omitted that I can think of for the security of the Black Town.’ Haidar was not sufficiently venturesome to attack the fortified town; but the terror of the inhabitants was by no means at an end; for a little later came the disastrous news that a British force sent out to meet the invader had been cut to pieces at Conjeevaram.

Eventually, however, the Mysoreans were defeated, and the treaty of peace was a triumph for the Company.

The long delay in the building of the Wall was chiefly due to the fact that the representatives of the Company, being commercial men, naturally gave their chief attention to the Company’s mercantile business, and were apt to disregard the immediate necessity of expensive schemes which the Company’s military officers put forward as strategic requirements.

When the Wall was first talked about, after the recovery of Madras from the French, the Directors in England, who always kept a tight hand on the Company’s purse-strings, declared that the inhabitants of Black Town ought to be made to pay for the cost of their own defences, and should be taxed accordingly; and the name of the ‘Wall Tax Road,’ which runs alongside the Central Station to the Salt Cotaurs, is a standing reminder of the Directors’ decree, while the road itself is an indication of the alignment of the western wall.

The people protested indignantly against being taxed for the purpose, and, as a matter of fact, the representatives of the Company in India doubted whether they would be within their legal rights in compelling them to pay; and the tax was never actually levied.

What with the Wall Tax Road on the west and the seashore on the east, the existing remains on the north, and the Esplanade on the south, it is not difficult to form a general idea of the direction of the four sides of the wall within which the later Black Town was enclosed.

A Relic of Lawless Times

Such is the story of ‘The Wall;’ and the remains are an interesting relic of lawless times when at any minute it was possible that crowds of terror-stricken folk would suddenly be pouring through the gateways of the city at the alarming news that strange horsemen were dashing here and there in one or another of the suburbs, demanding money and jewels from the people and slaughtering unhappy individuals who tried to evade a response.

Continue with Part 3: Madras Expands, where the city’s territory grows to include San Thome, Egmore, and Chepauk Palace.

Adapted from Glyn Barlow, The Story of Madras (Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1921), a public-domain work. Barlow drew principally on the Records of Fort St. George and Colonel Love’s Vestiges of Madras for his own research.

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