Madras may be the result of a scandal. Geographically it was the least suited for  a trading base much less a fort. But the father of the city  and the founder of Madras as we know today, Francis Day, insisted on building it on the north side of the river Cooum for reasons best known to him. With no fresh water or local population, everything including the stones for the fort had to be  carted from far away. The low depth of the sea could not let ships berth in the fort side  nor warships help it when in distress. They had to anchor two miles away. For centuries, Day was sorely cursed by captains of warships, for his choice of the location of the fort, due to immense difficulties in anchoring ships. This meant that at various important occasions in the terrestrial conflict, the powerful English fleet was rendered useless, having to weigh anchor and move out to sea at low tide. Merchantmen too found the same flaw, they would have to wait until high tide to bring goods and passengers ashore or risk wetting them in the majula boats used as ferries.

But an insistent  Day secured a grant offering the village of Madrasapattinam to the English for a period of two years, dated August 1639, and after obtaining the approval of the Factory at Masulipatnam and the Presidency of Bantam (in Java).

But rumours were rife even in those days that Francis Day had a half Portugese Mezito  girlfriend living in nearby Santhome and wanted to be proximal to her. So was an illicit affair the reason why the seeds of Madras were sown? On Day’s demise the unnamed girl moved in with Henry Greenhill as a live-in partner. She was perhaps the unsung ‘Mother of Madras.’

Opposite what stands today as Kamaraj Hall, was the Minor Bungalow, initially called Newington House, where the British tried to inculcate — within the scions of princely and zamindari families — a British etiquette and education.

The principal, De la hey, was the brother of the legendary Miss De la hey who in July 1914 founded the Queen Mary’s College.

 

A dashing cricketer, De la hey, also had a much younger wife who was as flirtatious as she was alluring. And this certainly distracted the all-male student line up to what extent nobody knew at that time. All of a sudden, on the night of 15 October 1919, 30 minutes past midnight, someone entered the principal’s bedroom and shot him with a 12-bore gun.  While it was publicly said that the reason was some ill feeling between the principal and the students, who on one occasion he had referred to as “barbarous Tamilians”, but everyone knew there was more to it than that.

Reportedly, De la hey was sleeping in a bed while his wife was sleeping in the verandah when he was shot. The noise awoke Mrs De la hey and several boys. De la hey died instantaneously. The police were called in and inquiries were made and the suspicion fell on two princes — Singampatti and Kadambur (the princes were referred by the name of their domains).

This fuelled all sorts of rumours and the local atmosphere was surcharged with prejudgment that the defence asked the trial to be shifted to Bombay. The widow gave a brief statement to the police claiming that she saw two students in the room, one of them held a shotgun. To avoid a scandal, the British government packed her off and she was never heard of again. With the only eyewitness to the crime absent, the prosecution’s case was bound to fail. Singampatti turned into a Crown witness but, his testimony was weak and Kadambur was acquitted. The scandal resulted in the school being shut down when the rulers realised that this type of education was causing more harm than good.

He had eight children and she had three. But that did not stop the maharaja of Baroda, a monarch of one of the largest Indian princely states, from falling in love with Sita, the wife of a small time zamindar from Alwarpet.

They met in Madras Race Course where his horses were racing and she had come to bet. Sita decided to leave her family and the king decided to keep his.  The freshly imposed bigamy laws of Baroda were broken by the man who laid the laws.  Their marriage involved a lot of legal tricks, including converting Sita to Islam to get a divorce from her former husband, before marrying the maharaja.  After marriage, Sita maintained a flamboyant and feisty lifestyle. Even her cigarette holder was studded with rubies. Her seven-stranded natural pearl necklace was renowned. She also appeared on many fashion magazines.

Sita and the king fled to Monaco ahead of the Indian independence with almost every precious thing in the state treasury. Even Sardar Patel was dumbfounded when he learnt of this heist.

The couple divorced but Sita retained all her jewellery which she disposed whenever she ran short of cash. The rich and famous of the world ended up buying these jewels. The duchess of Windsor purchased a necklace of emeralds which had been on Sita’s anklets earlier. When they met in a party, Sita supposedly remarked: “They look as good on your neck as they did on my feet”. The duchess then returned the jewels to the shop.

As you enter the Connemara star hotel, you can see the picture of the then Governor of Madras Robert Bourke, first Baron Connemara. But, the hotel is more connected to his wife.

 

Connemara was responsible for building some of Madras’ landmarks during his tenure — the Connemara library, the Madras High Court, and Victoria Technical Institute. Railway improvement, famine relief and other issues made him popular with the press. The Madras Mail even called his administration “a bright epoch in the annals of Madras”

The governorship went on quite well till the day that governor’s wife cut short her outstation visit and returned to her Madras government house.

To her shock, she found her husband indulging in an orgy with a host of women, both European and local. More importantly, his niece Evelyn, whom lady Connemara hated, was the hostess of the party. Connemara, feeling safe that his wife was faraway had sworn his servants into secrecy, and was enjoying his time with the women until his wife landed at the porch to find him with his pants down. Literally. Lady Connemara did not enter the palace and, in a huff, she moved into what is now known as Hotel Connemara and stayed there for three months till she started the divorce proceedings.  The case was heard in November 1890, in London where the scandal was reported better because the couple had been quite popular at home. No lawyer appeared for Connemara. Taking advantage of this, the wife’s lawyer brought forth a maid who confessed to have indulged in adultery with the governor. After this, Connemara’s career began its downward spiral, as his father- in-law was viceroy Dalhousie.

The Regent Diamond is an internally flawless diamond with a bluish fluorescence weighing 141-carats which is currently on display in the Louvre Museum in Paris. It is widely considered the purest diamond in the world.

 

In 1698, a slave found the 410-carats uncut diamond in Kollur Mine and, supposedly, hid it inside a large wound in his leg. An English sea captain stole the diamond from the slave and threw him into the shark infested waters.

 

Later, it turned up into the hands of Thomas Pitt, the governor of Fort St. George, who acquired it from eminent Indian diamond merchant Jamchund for 48,000 pagodas (henceforth known as the Pitt Diamond). Pitt, secretly dispatched the stone to London hidden in the heel of his son’s shoe aboard the ship Loyal Cooke. The matter was kept a secret as the governor was not supposed to be involved in any business other than that of the company.

But, there were widespread rumours in India and England that the governor had acquired the diamond by misusing his powers. Leading satirist Alexander Pope penned the following lines in his Moral Essays:

“Asleep and naked as an Indian lay An honest factor stole a Gem away; He pledged it to the Knight, the Knight had wit, So kept the diamond, and the rogue was bit.” Initially, Pitt could not initially find a buyer for so pure a diamond but finally, the French royal family picked it up from him. The diamond, however, was known to attract misfortune to its owners. The unfortunate incidents with those who possessed the stone, including Napolean and Marie Antoinette, are well documented in history. Interestingly, the diamond seemed to be lucky only for the Pitt family as his family acquired much power along with the money the sale of the diamond, which led to his son and great grandson becoming powerful Prime Ministers of England.

South India was studded with many zamins whose owners created high and mighty titles for themselves. One of them was the Vizianagaram who owned a palace on the Adyar creek in Mandaveli Norton Road.

The Telugu-speaking Vizianagaram maharajas maintained a pan-India focus. The maharaja’s brother, Lt Col Sir Vijay Ananda Gajapathi, known in cricketing circles as Vizzy, was the captain of the Indian cricket team. The maharaja, Sir Alaka Narayana Gajapathi, had married a princess from Himachal Pradesh. The Punjabi speaking rani of Vizianagaram, Vidyawati, was obviously homesick and depended more on her friends than family.

Spurred on by one friend who later held a senior post in Delhi, she accused her husband of being insane and obtained custody of the children. The kids were then set on board a ship to England from Bombay. Her next goal was to take over the zamin. But the maharaja presented his case to the court and argued for it himself, as was advised by his lawyers, thus convincing the jury of his sanity. He won the case. When he sought the custody of his children, in a sensational judgment, Justice Venkatasubba Rao ordered the captain of the ship that the children had boarded to not set sail. The order was to arrest the ship and it was the first of its kind in the history of Indian courts.

 

But, even after winning the case, the maharaja walked off the first floor balcony in his Mandaveli palace less than a year later. The entire royal family abandoned the palace after stories spread of people having witnessed the king’s ghost inside the premises during twilight.

The palace was later let out for shooting and it was here that filmmaker AV Meiyappan shot his laughter riot Sabapathy.

Meanwhile, the queen lived a long life and established a number of Punjabi educational institutions as well as Madras’s gurudwara.

In 1944, Haridas — A mega hit of a superstar had just been released. And a black mailer had just been murdered. The Madras Police arrested the superstar, MK Thyagaraja Bhagavathar, on charges of conspiracy and murder. The motive — the deceased, Lakshmikanthan had blackmailed MKT about his second marriage to a girl, Rajam, who was almost half his age. MKT had given several movie hits which had inspired confidence in investors after the introduction of the talkies. His golden voice reverberated throughout Tamil speaking lands. His flamboyant style, daring scenes like kissing the heroine and storylines with Devadasis and dancers made him a superstar.

Naturally, the arrest naturally came as a shock and 10 films that MKT had signed were shelved or given off to less popular heroes. The state was agog with rumors of why MKT had been framed and who could have been the real murderer. Meanwhile, theatres ran the movie Haridas for almost three years. The trial was covered with great interest and in 1945, when newspapers across the world carried the headline “HITLER IS DEAD”, Tamil newspapers led with the news of MKT’s conviction. He was convicted and jailed for three years before he extricated himself with the help of a leading lawyer Ethiraj. But when he tried to make a comeback in movies, he found that songsters had been replaced by orators and the audience’s tastes had waned from mythologicals and moved on to socials. But he was determined to make it big again and, with the help of his friends, produced more films which did not do well. He died a poor man.