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A soldier's endowment
CELEBRATING ITS 150th year this year are the Doveton Corrie Schools in Vepery. But the celebration marks the Doveton part of the name and not the 20 years earlier Corrie contribution. Another little-known fact is that the Doveton name in the schools has no connection with Doveton House, that heritage building that is the heart of Women's Christian College. Curiously, both Dovetons were Johns, but the John Doveton of Doveton House was a Lieutenant General in the East India Company, whereas the John Doveton remembered in the school was an Anglo-Indian Captain Commandant in the Army of the Nizam of Hyderabad. Said to have commanded a regiment of the Nizam's Infantry, his rank must have been equivalent of a Lieutenant Colonel, though he is usually referred to as Capt. John Doveton.
Capt. Doveton had been abandoned by his family as a child and was found by a relative in what was probably the Madras Male Asylum. The relative took an interest in the boy and got him a commission in the Hyderabad Army in 1817. Doveton not only rose in the ranks, but he also made himself a fortune which he took back with him to England after resigning his commission. The 150th anniversary of his death will be on October 15.
Capt. Doveton's will bequeathed £50,000 - a huge sum for the times - for the education of the Anglo-Indian community. This sum was equally divided between the Parental Academy in Calcutta which changed its name to Doveton College, and a school his executor in Madras, Peter Carstairs, founded in Vepery - the Doveton Protestant College opening on March 1, 1855. A Doveton Girls' School was opened the next year and moved into its present buildings in 1888.
Meanwhile, two decades earlier the Madras Parental Academy was established in Georgetown. The school, which opened in 1834, took the name of Bishop Daniel Corrie, the first Anglican Bishop of Madras, after he was enthroned in 1835, and the school had been made a high school. The Bishop Corrie High School and the Doveton Protestant College amalgamated on January 1, 1928, and took the name Doveton Corrie High School. It is under that name that the school with roots 170 years old and 150 years old, still thrives. The school and its three sister institutions now have an enrolment of over 6,000.
S. MUTHIAH
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