Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
Favouring the `et' not the `id'
Lady and Lord Willingdon
WHEN THE Chennai Willingdon Corporate Foundation celebrated its centenary 10 days ago, I was reminded not only of the transformations that the institution had undergone over the years but also of how often in Madras nowadays we keep substituting the `id' with an `et' and insist on calling institutions in the city named after the Willingdons `Wellington,' even if Arthur Wellesley means nothing to all those Wellington fans. And of such institutions in Madras and the Districts there are more than a few, making such a, may I call it malapropism or spoonerism, commonplace.
Amongst the institutions in the city remembering the Willingdons, there are the Lady Willingdon Teachers' Training College and the Lady Willingdon School attached to it, what was once the Lady Willingdon Ladies' Recreation Club - the Presidency's first women's club - that has now dropped Her Ladyship's name, and a Willingdon Trust with property in the Egmore area. But sure enough, look them up in the telephone directory and several of them have become `Wellington' institutions!
Sir Freeman Freeman-Thomas, who served as Liberal member of Parliament for a decade before he was elevated to the peerage with a baronetcy, was one of the first commoners to, in time, be made a Marques. But it was as Lord Willingdon that he served as Governor of Bombay (1913-19) and Governor of Madras (1919-24). As Viscount Willingdon, he was the first governor-general of Canada (1926-31) and then Viceroy of India (1931-36). Wherever the Willingdons went, they were centre of the social whirl, enthusiastic supporters of sport (he was a fair cricketer and used to be a tennis partner of tennis-loving King George V at one time) and energetic sponsors of good causes. But on the political front, he was not the most successful representative of the Crown, certainly not in India.
It was manor-born Lady Mary Adelaide who on her marriage became Lady Willingdon, and later, in Madras, founded the South India Nursing Association in 1920, amalgamating with it the Lady Ampthill Nurses' Institute that was founded in 1904. Both institutions in their early days were staffed by `European' nurses who provided nursing care for sick `Europeans' and, in time, members of the Indian elite. It was Lady Willingdon who in 1920 raised sufficient funds to take over the Hyde Park Nursing Home from Sir Gordon Fraser and amalgamated it with the nursing facility run by the Association. The new medical facility was named the Lady Willingdon Nursing Home. It functioned from the Western Castlet, off Mount Road, before moving from these rented premises to its own facility in Pycrofts Garden Road in 1950. In time, it became known as the Willingdon Hospital, before Sankara Nethralaya took it over in 1998 and transformed it from a general medical facility to a specialist ophthalmic hospital.
Willingdon's foray into Indian politics was nowhere near as successful. No sooner had he arrived in Madras than he was at loggerheads with The Hindu that was being vociferous about "the terrible persecution" in the Punjab. Threatening it with the Press Act, making common cause with the Justice Party, fuming over The Hindu's support to the non-cooperation movement, certainly did not endear him to the paper. On two occasions in 1923, it was quite scathing about him. Once, it wrote, "... there is a striking contrast between the earnestness with which he takes his social and sporting engagements and the light heartedness with which he treats his political responsibilities." And when later in the year the paper was not given the list of Government nominees to the Legislature, it bitingly reminded Government House, "We seem to remember occasions when we have been asked with a fine and charitable disregard of our non-co-operation proclivities to support some doubtless worthy movement which is the object of Their Excellencies' benevolent interest. And daily, presumably with a view to publication, we are favoured with a catalogue of Their Excellencies' engagements. We could cite other instances to show that the Government sometimes considers that the newspaper, even a non-co-operating newspaper, may have its own uses... " The Hindu always saw Lord Willingdon as "as a fanatical upholder of the theory that the King can do no wrong... and what was (he, as head of Government) if not a King." And that was what many others were to see him as when he became viceroy. But whatever he was as Governor and Viceroy, the Willingdons left behind a strong imprint on the societal, social and sporting scene in the India of the 1920s and 1930s.
S. MUTHIAH
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
|
