Calcutta

Calcutta
Presidency: Bengal
Coordinates:	22.572625°N, 88.363893°E
Altitude:	9 m (30 ft)
Present Day Details
Place Name:	Kolkata
State/Province:	West Bengal
Country:	India
Transport links
East Indian Railway (Howrah) Bengal-Nagpur Railway Calcutta and South Eastern Railway (Sealdah) Eastern Bengal Railway (Sealdah) Calcutta Port Commissioners' Railway Arrah-Sasaram Light Railway Barasat-Basirhat Light Railway Futwah-Islampur Light Railway Howrah-Amta Light Railway Howrah-Sheakhalla Light Railway

Calcutta (present day Kolkata) is a large city in north-east India. Calcutta was the headquarters of the Government of the Bengal Presidency. It was also the capital of British India until Delhi became the capital on 12th December 1911. The city had a large European mercantile community.

History

Battle of Calcutta 1757
3rd Carnatic War

Spelling Variants

Modern name: Kolkata
Variants: Calcutta

Location

Calcutta is now known as Kolkata in modern day India and is situated at 22°33′N, 88°20′E in the Ganges Delta.

Places of interest

Calcutta in 1862

The Maidan

The site of Fort William, the Maidan was (and still is) the centre of Calcutta. It was bounded on the west side by the Hooghly River and the Strand Road, and on the east side by Chowringhi Road. Government House, the Governor's residence, was at the north end of the Maidan and Belvedere, the residence of the Lieutenent-Governor of Bengal, was near the southern end.

Eden Gardens

The Eden Gardens were started by Lord Aukland's sisters and are beautifully laid out. They were the main gathering place of Calcutta Society in the time of the British Raj. They are also the home of India's oldest cricket ground, the Calcutta Cricket Club, and have a lake which was the home of the Calcutta Rowing Club. Beside the lake is a Burmese Pagoda brought from Prome and set up in 1856. There were many statues in the Gardens. Calcutta Eden Gardens Links to a postcard of Eden Gardens in the Fibiwiki images collection

Churches and missions

Anglican

• St James Church - see FIBIS Journal 5, "The Man Who Built St James Calcutta"
• St John's Cathedral Church - consecrated 1787
• St Paul's Cathedral - completed in 1847
• St Peter's Church, Fort William - built 1828
• 'Old' Mission Church - see article in FIBIS Journal 7, includes a list of graves
• St Stephen's, Kidderpore
• The contact address for the Church of North India is

Bishop’s House, 51, Chowringhee Road, Kolkata 700 071.

Phone : 033-22825259 033-22482583, 65347770

Fax : 033-22826340

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  Exterior View of St James Church

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  Pulpit at St James Church

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  Interior View of St James Church

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  Altar of St James Church

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  Early Vicars of St James Church

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  Font of St James Church

Roman Catholic Church, Dhurrumtollah Street, Calcutta

Roman Catholic

• RC Cathedral (Virgin Mary of the Rosary) - built 1797
• St Patrick's Chapel, Fort William - built 1857
• St Theresa - built 1893
• St Thomas' Church - begun in 1841, adjacent to the Convent of Our Lady of Loreto

Other denominations

• St Andrew's Church of Scotland - opened 1818. For contact address, see Church of North India above. The current (2010) Minister of St Andrew's is Rev. Andrew Simick, the Vice President of the Diocese of Calcutta (CNI).
• Greek Church - established 1780
• Holy Church of Nazareth (Armenian) - built in 1724. Dr. Reuben Khachaturyan/Liz Chater have transcribed all the baptisms at this church. They can be viewed on the FIBIS database. Liz also has many photos of graves at the Nazereth Church on her website.

Missions

• Church Mission Society
• Free Church of Scotland - started in 1830
• London Missionary Society
• Oxford Mission - Church of England
• Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (Anglican)

External links

• Churches and Cathedrals of India Part V - Eastern India by 'ChurchesofIndia' on You Tube includes Calcutta

Non-Christian places of worship

As well as the temples and mosques that served the general Indian populace, Calcutta also housed:

• Parsi temple
• Synagogue
• Chinese temple

Cemeteries

See Cemeteries in Calcutta. There is also information about the crematorium.

Education

• "The Educational Establishments of Calcutta Past and Present" - article in the Calcutta Review Volume 13 (January-June 1850), page 442.
• "Reports on Colleges and Schools in India" , article in the Calcutta Review Volume 42 1866, page 57
• "Old Calcutta :It’s Schoolmasters" article in the Calcutta Review July 1913 held on website of Madge Family of Bengal.

Colleges

• Bengal School of Art
• Bishop's College, Circular Road - run by the Oxford Mission
• Calcutta Medical College - formerly Bengal Medical College, founded 1835
• Doveton College
• Presidency College

Schools

Also refer Orphans and Calcutta schools c late 1700s

• Benevolent Institution School - see these two references from 1818 and 1851
• La Martiniere School - established 1836 Wikipedia, La Martiniere For Girls, Kolkata
• St James' School - founded by Bishop Cotton in 1864
• St Lawrence High School
• St Thomas School, Kidderpore - founded 1789 as the Free School
• St. Xavier's Collegiate School - founded by the Jesuits in 1860

Economy and business

• "Calcutta" Street's Indian and Colonial Mercantile Directory for 1869, page 9. Google Books
• "Old-Time Conveyances in Calcutta" [the famous Calcutta coach building firm of Steuart & Co.] by Frank Bushby Bengal Past and Present, Volume 41, 1931, pages 138-140 Archive.org
• "A Famous Calcutta Firm: Thacker, Spink & Co." by Evan Cotton Bengal Past and Present, Volume 41, 1931, pages 157-164 Archive.org
• "The Early History of Morrison & Cottle (Private) Ltd., a Producer-Retail Enterprise of Calcutta" by Christine Furedy, Bengal Past and Present, Volume XCVIII, Part I, 1979 html version, Original Microsoft Word document "Pioneers in Leather Goods" by Christine Furedy 1980 html version, Original Microsolt Word document www.yorku.ca
• "The Calcutta Piano Trade in the Late Eighteenth Century" by Ian Woodfield from the book Music and British Culture, 1785-1914 Essays in Honour of Cyril Ehrlich 2000. Oxford University Press.
• This India List post mentions the book, available as Preview Google Books The Richest East India Merchant: the Life and Business of John Palmer of Calcutta, 1767-1836 by Anthony Webster 2007. John Palmer ran an 'agency house', a global commercial firm involved in banking, the opium trade, shipping, plantation agriculture and trade. Available at the British Library
• Calcutta Businesses in 1933

FIBIS resources

• David Atkinson, "Eliza Fay: New Aspects" FIBIS Journal No 24 (Autumn 2010), pages 1-11. For details of how to access this article, see FIBIS Journals.
• Images of Calcutta in Fibiwiki collection

External Links

Encyclopedia entries

• Kolkata Wikipedia
• History of Kolkata Wikipedia
• Maidan (Kolkata) Wikipedia
• Calcutta 1911 LovetoKnow
• "[Catholic] Archdiocese of Calcutta" from The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913 Saintwiki.com

Maps

• Calcutta Maps 1756,1839,1847,1883 Columbia University
• Calcutta Map 1842 David Rumsey Collection
• Calcutta Map 1909 Digital South Asia Library,University of Chicago.
• Kolkata, Google Maps Map with many buildings marked

Guides and directories

See Directories online for links to many directories with information on Calcutta.

• Handbook of the Bengal Presidency. With an account of Calcutta City by Edward E Eastwick, published by John Murray 1882 Archive.org
• Thacker's Guide to Calcutta (1906) by Rev W.K. Firminger a noted historian. This book gives the historical background of Calcutta, area by area. Read online or download Archive.org
• Tourist guide and shopping list : where to go, what to see, where to shop in Calcutta and Burma 1920 Southeast Asia Visions

Images

• Search the British Library Online Gallery APAC Collection for Calcutta
• Old Indian Photos, category Kolkata
• Calcutta with images from Prof. Frances Pritchett’s webpage
• Calcutta Faces and Places in Pre-camera Days by Wilmont Corfield 1910 Archive.org
• Calcutta 1945: An American Military Photograph Album University of Pennsylvania
• Calcutta 1947 Photographs on flickr.com
• Calcutta from Great Mirror
• Writers' Building, Kolkata Photographs from Skyscrapercity.com

Other

• Calcutta 1940's Oral history site A more recent website Calcutta 1940’s, but with fewer photographs
• This India List post mentions Japanese air raids during the World War 2, at Lillooah, a EIR colony near Calcutta, and Calcutta.
• Kolkata Sports Heritage Scribd.com
• Royal Calcutta Turf Club Indiarace.com
• Calcutta Rowing Club
• Changed street names, old and new Calcuttaweb.com, Calcutta Yellow Pages
• The Sons Of Mystery: A Masonic Miscellany From Old Calcutta by Pratap Chandra Chunder 1973
• Empire Theatre and Theatre Royal, Calcutta joydiv.org
• A trip down memory lane: Calcutta at Christmas . The Telegraph, Calcutta Sunday, 25 December 2011

Historical books online

Also see Newspapers and journals online for many Calcutta publications including the Calcutta Review

• "Calcutta" Imperial Gazetteer of India, Volume 9, page 260 c 1909
• "Bengal and Fort William" A new account of the East Indies, Volume 2, page 1 by Alexander Hamilton 1744 Google Books
• The early annals of the English in Bengal, being the Bengal public consultations for the first half of the eighteenth century, summarised, extracted, and edited with introductions and illustrative addenda by Charles Robert Wilson Archive.org. Volume 1 1704-1710 1895, Volume 2 Part 1 1711-1717 1900
• The good old days of Honorable John company; being curious reminiscences illustrating manners and customs of the British in India during the rule of the East India Co. from 1600 to 1858; with brief notices of places and people of those times, &c. &c. &c. Compiled from newspapers and other publications by W. H. Carey. Archive.org. These books principally refer to Calcutta.
  • Volume 1 1906 (reprint of original published 1882), Volume 2 1907 (reprint of original published c 1882-1887), Volume 3 1887
• Calcutta in the Olden Times Two articles in the Calcutta Review available on Google Books
  • Its Localities Calcutta Review Vol 18, July-Dec 1852, p 275
  • Its People Calcutta Review Vol 35, Sept-Dec 1860, p 164
• Echoes from Old Calcutta: Being Chiefly Reminiscences of the Days of Warren Hastings, Francis and Impey by Henry Elmsley Busteed 1882 edition. The 1908 Fourth edition is much enlarged. Archive.org
• The Early History and Growth of Calcutta by Binaya Krishna Deb 1905 Archive.org
• Calcutta, Past and Present by Kathleen Blechynden 1905 Archive.org
• The Thackerays in India and some Calcutta graves by Sir William Wilson Hunter 1897 Archive.org
• The history, design, and present state of the religious, benevolent and charitable institutions, founded by the British in Calcutta and its vicinity by Charles Lushington 1824 Google Books
• Recollections of Calcutta for over half a century by Montague Massey 1918 Archive.org
• Calcutta in the 19th Century by P Thankappan Nair contains extracts by many authors and is available to read online on the Digital Library of India website. The contents is computer page 10, and the index is computer page 1028. Refer Online books-Digital Library of India for more details about this site.
• Memoirs of William Hickey, edited by Alfred Spencer, published 1913-1925. (Note however the comment that a later version, edited by Peter Quennell, London 1960 , is to be preferred to that edited by Alfred Spencer, in which some of Hickey’s racier reportage is expurgated) Volume 1 1749-1775 Index Archive.org Volume 2 1775-1782 Index Google Books. Volume 3 (1782-1790) and Volume 4 (1790-1809) may be viewed online on the Digital Library of India website.
• Calcutta in September 1800, Part 10, page 41 from Cursory Remarks, on board the ship Friendship by Mary Anne Reid, continues part 11 and part 12 Google Books. (Full details in this India List post)
• Calcutta in 1810 commences page 131 Journal of a Residence in India by Maria Graham 2nd Edition 1813 Illustrated by Engravings. Google Books
• Calcutta in 1836 commences page 7 of Book 2 Travels in South-Eastern Asia, embracing Hindustan, Malaya, Siam, and China: with notices of numerous missionary stations, and a full account of the Burman Empire; with dissertations, tables, etc by Howard Malcolm 2nd edition 1839 2 volumes in one Google Books
• "Adulterated Liquor sold to Sailors and Soldiers in the Bazars of Calcutta" and "The dangers to which Sailors and Soldiers are exposed in the Bazars of Calcutta" from On the preservation of the health of seamen, especially of those frequenting Calcutta and the other Indian ports by Norman Chevers MD, Surgeon, Bengal Army 1864 Google Books
• Catholic Institutions in Calcutta c 1881 from Indian Gods, Sages, and Cities by C Cesary Limited View Google Books 1987 page 172 reprint of original published 1881 at Calcutta by Catholic Orphan Press. Reprint available at Cambridge University Library.
• Report of the Commissioners for the Improvement of the Town of Calcutta Third Half-yearly Report 1850, Fourth Half-yearly Report 1851, Tenth Report, for the year 1853 Google Books
• Selections from the Records of the Government of Bengal: no 10: Report on the Establishment of Water-Works to Supply the City of Calcutta 1853 Archive.org
• Report on the Drainage and Conservancy of Calcutta by David Boyes Smith M.D., Sanitary Commissioner for Bengal 1869 Google Books
• Municipal Calcutta: Its Institutions in their Origins and Growth by SW Goode 1916, is available to read online on the Digital Library of India website. Table of Contents is computer page 16. Refer Online books-Digital Library of India for more details about this site
• "The City of Calcutta" from Bengal and Assam, Behar and Orissa : their history, people, commerce and industrial resources by Somerset Playne , J W Bond 1917 Archive.org.
• Bengal Past and Present-Journal of the Calcutta Historical Society

• Volume 39, Part 1 Jan-March 1930 Archive.org
• Volume 41, Part 2, April- June 1931 pages 101-188 Archive.org
• A broken range of volumes is available to read online on the Digital Library of India website. Volume 2, part 2, commences at (actual) page 205, contents is computer page 8. Volume 25 has Volume 26 from computer page 211. Volume 44 is July-December 1932 and commences page 103, contents is computer page 7. Volume 49 has the language coded as bengali, so will not appear if the search is for english language books. Refer Online books-Digital Library of India for more details about this site.

Bengal, Past and Present, Journal of the Calcutta Historical Society was first published 1907 and is a very valuable source of information. Volumes are available at the British Library. There are published indexes, each of one volume, as follows: Volumes 1 (July 1907)-8 (June 1914); Volumes 9 (1914)-18 (1919); Volumes 1 (1907)-85 (1966); Volumes 1 (1907)-104 (1985). In addition, the British Library has an index for Volumes 19-29.

Note that a different Journal, with a somewhat similar name, is the Calcutta Historical Journal, published by the University of Calcutta, first published July 1976, available at the British Library

• Baptisms 1767 -1777 and Baptisms 1778-1782 Transcriptions from Registers of St John's, Calcutta by E W Madge as they appeared in Bengal Past and Present – this link is to website of Madge Family of Bengal. The first page of the second pdf lists articles in other volumes of BP&P containing transcriptions of baptisms, marriages and burials to 1800. Each listing contains many pages of biographical notes (13 and 16 pages respectively)

• John Williamson Palmer was an American doctor and author who wrote c 1858 "The Chorus of the Palanquin Bearers", a description of his transit through Cossitollah Street, Calcutta. Photograph of Man in Palki (Palanquin) in Calcutta from the Smithsonian Institution. Click image to enlarge.