Moore, of Moore Market

Sir George Moore

In its early years the Madras Gymkhana Club had military men presiding over its fate. Not surprising perhaps considering that it exists on land belonging to the army. One among these soldiering men was Col. Sir George Montgomerie John Moore, who was president for two terms – 1890 and 1893. Madras that is Chennai has reason to remember this personality.

Not much is known of Moore’s origins but from his name we can infer that he was Irish. His career in the army is also not documented and it is likely that he chose to become an administrator at an early stage in his life. In 1886, he became President of the Madras Corporation, a post from which he retired in 1902. In 1887, following Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, he was knighted and became Sir George Moore, Kt, CIE.

Sir George appears to have taken his role as Corporation President very seriously. A tribute to this was paid by the Madras High Court in a case in the 1890s, when the owner of a bungalow in Tondiarpet sued the Corporation for operating a burial ground and crematorium close by. The Bench relied heavily on Sir George’s testimony and noted his extensive knowledge of the city. Sir George was also very sensitive to criticism about the Corporation’s functioning. In 1902, when the Madras Mail wrote disparagingly about the role of the Sanitary Inspector in quarantining households afflicted with cholera, Moore sued the newspaper for defamation. He won his case in the High Court but this was set aside in an appeal.

His tenure as President is best remembered for the building of Moore Market. Till its construction, the principal market for Madras was the Popham’s Market on Broadway. Long condemned as unsanitary it was allowed to remain till the 1880s when thanks to Sir George, a site for the new market was identified at a corner of People’s Park, close to the Central Station of today. The old Popham’s Market was demolished and on its site came up Loane’s Park, named after Samuel Joshua Loane who was Chief Engineer of the Madras Corporation. It is now Sriramulu Park, named after a Mayor of Madras.

Sir George laid the foundation stone for Moore Market in 1898. Designed by RE Ellis in the Indo-Saracenic style in a series of quadrangles enclosing shops, it was constructed by A Subramania Iyer. Praised as the most modern market of its times, it had separate sections for vegetables, flowers and meat. Later it became well known for gramophone records, books, toys, clothes and antiques. The market was gutted in 1985 and demolished later. The Suburban Railway terminal stands on its site and fronting it, in a small park is an exquisite but badly maintained replica of Moore Market.

That memorial to Moore may have vanished but several others survive. One is Moore Pavilion, standing forlorn next to the railway tracks just off Central Station. Access to it is now cut off but in its heyday it was the head office of the South Indian Athletic Association (SIAA), which did much to promote athletics n Madras. Founded in 1901, the SIAA had Sir George as its first President. For years the SIAA held an annual Park Town Fair during Christmas week at People’s Park. In 1903, it introduced boxing to Madras. The Moore Pavilion, handsome with two stories, tiled roof and pillared verandah, was from where VIPs saw the races and the boxing events. In 1978, when the SIAA’s lease of the land expired, the Pavilion was handed over to the Railways which made it the home for its Sir Ashley Biggs Institute. Now the building is abandoned.

Another barely surviving memorial to Sir George surfaced recently. This was the foundation stone to the Chetpet Dhobhikana, which records that it was placed in position on 8th December 1902, by Sir George and that it was the first formal facility for washermen in the city. A third memorial to Sir George is his full-length portrait in the Madras Corporation. Raja Ravi Varma executed this in 1902. Commissioned at a cost of Rs 3000 it bears the signature of the painter and his younger brother Raja Raja Varma. Ravi Varma documented the progress of this portrait on a day-to-day basis in his diary.

Sir George evidently liked the performing arts. Pammal Sambanda Mudaliar notes in his memoirs that Sir George attended a benefit performance of the Suguna Vilasa Sabha at the VP Hall in 1897.The proceeds went to the Indian Famine Relief Fund. Noted film historian Stephen Hughes writes that the first film screening in Madras, which was held at VP Hall on 10th and 11th January 1902 by the Cinematograph Exhibition Company, was under the patronage of Sir George Moore.

Moore appears to have been the ultimate clubman. He played a key role in the revival of the Madras Race Club. This was in 1887 when the club had nearly died out. He became a steward and helped it to get on its feet. In 1890, he was founder Vice-President of the Adyar Club. He was President of the Madras Club in 1897/98 and in that capacity welcomed Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence and grandson of Queen Victoria to a reception at the clubhouse on Mount Road. It must have given Moore great satisfaction, though he was by then long dead, that the Madras and Adyar Clubs merged in 1962 to form The Madras Club. Moore was also a Freemason and in 1891 he was District Grand Master of the District Grand Lodge of Madras.

He was clearly a man of many parts.

This article appeared in the in-house magazine of the Gymkhana Club

Boyson of Binny

JA Boyson

Two years after its founding, i.e. in 1886, the Gymkhana club got its first businessman (or boxwallah as men of that ilk were known) in the Hon. John Alexander Boyson.

The Boysons had a long association with Madras. JA’s father, JR Boyson had been solicitor to the Government of Madras and then in 1863, become one of the founders of the National Bank of India (later a part of Grindlays and now Standard Chartered Bank). The local agents for the bank were Binny & Co, whose Managing Partner, RO Campbell was also one of the Directors of the bank, besides being President of the Bank of Madras. Campbell and the Boysons were related by marriage and it is perhaps no wonder that JA joined Binny. When Campbell retired from Binny in 1871, JA succeeded to his share in the partnership. He was to be with the firm for a record 50 plus years.

It was during JA’s (or Boyson as we shall now refer to him) tenure as one of the senior partners that Binny got into the yarn business, an area in which it will forever be remembered. The Buckingham Mills came up in 1876 and the Carnatic Mills in 1881. In between, in 1877, the Bangalore Steam Woollen Mills were set up. In 1882, this became the Bangalore Woollen, Cotton and Silk Mills Co. Limited. In 1903, Binny went into coal mining and in 1905 it became the local agent for Burmah-Shell, setting up a vast storage facility at Royapuram. This was to be a convenient target for the German ship Emden in 1914. Under Boyson, Binny pioneered the introduction of electricity and trams into Madras.

But all was not rosy. It was also during Boyson’s tenure that Binny experienced two of its greatest crises. The first was its disastrous venture into sugar, begun in 1897 thanks to a desire on the part of Boyson and his junior GL Chambers to rival Parry. The Deccan Sugar and Abkhari Company was set up and was soon bleeding money hand over fist. By 1902, Binny was in dire straits. It was left to Parry to step in and buy the loss-making unit from Binny. Boyson, who had left Madras by then for London, with a view to managing the office there prior to retirement, had to come back. Chambers had conveniently gone off on a cruise and someone had to hold the fort.

And then in 1906 came the Arbuthnot Crash, which saw the going bust of one of the biggest business houses of the city. Arbuthnots, which had also been into banking as were Binny and Parry, went down with the savings of several thousand depositors. Confidence in British business houses was at an all-time low and soon there was a run on Binny. Boyson was the man on the spot and he worked at lightning speed.

Maintaining continuous telegraphic contact with London, Boyson and his partner CB Simpson first tried organising a local guarantee put together between the Chartered Bank, the National Bank, the Mercantile Bank, Best & Co and Wilson & Co. When this failed, he turned to British India Steam Navigation one of whose directors was James Lyle Mackay, later Lord Inchcape and founder of the Inchcape group of companies. Negotiations followed and the Inchcape group agreed to acquire and restructure Binny.

Following this, on 31st October 1906, the old firm of Binny & Co went into voluntary liquidation. And on 16th November, it resurrected, now as a private limited firm under the Inchcape group. Boyson’s partnership in the old firm was now worthless and he was practically ruined but being a Scot, he cannily managed to make himself and Simpson the Madras managers of the new firm at 3500 pounds a year plus 20% of the net profits. He prospered thereafter. In 1911 he became the only Director in India for Binny. He was knighted in 1914 and that year returned to England where he remained a Director at the London office till his death in 1926. His son John Charles Boyson became a Director of Binny in Madras and remained one till 1934.

Boyson was active in Madras society. He was Chairman of the Madras Chamber of Commerce in 1889/90 and also 1893/94. He fought for the laying of a broad-gauge Madras-Vijayawada railway line, which eventually came to fruition. He was a Director on the Board of the Bank of Madras and an active member of the Madras Musical Association founded in 1864 and still going strong. Boyson was also evidently an active clubman for he presided over the Madras Club the same year that he was overlord at the Gymkhana!