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Pride of the alumnae seeks support
In the past few years, there's been a lot heard about IIT and IIM alumni who have made fortunes at home and abroad, contributing considerably to improving facilities and academics at their alma maters. I've not heard of too many other institutions in India getting such handsome contributions from their alumni. Which is why I was happy to hear recently that the Old Students' Association of Queen Mary's College was determined to do something about a campus that was literally collapsing in parts and creaking in others. Having received a seven-figure grant from the Department of Education, the College has found its old students committing themselves to raising the balance needed to reach the eight figures necessary to restore the College's 19th Century and early 20th Century buildings and establish a corpus for their maintenance.
Capper House, once the heart of the campus, was built by Lt. Col. Francis Capper of the Madras Army around 1800, the first residence, apart from Chepauk Palace, built on the beachfront between Fort St. George and San Thomé. When it became Capper House Hotel, one of the city's first hostelries, is not certain, but in July 1914, the Madras College for Women opened its doors to 37 students in these run-down premises it rented.
The second oldest college for women in the South and the first in Madras, the Women's College was renamed Queen Mary's College for Women in 1917, two years after the Government had bought Capper House and restored it as a home worthy of the Presidency Government's first women's college. A footnote to the Capper House story is the fact that the Colonel was a well-known geographer of his time and, significantly, the College remains one of the few educational institutions in the country that pays more than passing attention to Geography.
Today, Capper House has been abandoned as being unsafe after a portion of it collapsed a few years ago. But buildings in worse shape have been restored. What is needed is the will, a willingness of Government engineers to work with conservation experts — and the wherewithal. And alumnae leaders M. Uma Maheswaran (Tel: 620 0405) and Kasturi Eswaran (Tel: 492 6214) feel they can generate all three with the help of fellow old students and well-wishers.
Restoration planned is not of Capper House alone. It is hoped that sufficient funds would be raised to restore all the buildings Founder-Principal Miss de la Hey built or acquired during her tenure from 1914 to 1936. These include Beach House, built by Justice S. Subramania Iyer across the way from the police headquarters, and the slightly newer bungalow built opposite it by Justice Sankara Iyer, both acquired by the College in the 1920s, as well as those built through the initiative of Lord Pentland and the drive of Miss de lay Hey: Pentland House (1915), Stone House (1918) and Jeypore House (1921).
While Miss de la Hey, honoured with a bust in Queen Mary's, will remain a respected name in the history of education in Madras, it is a family name sadly recalled more often in less pleasant circumstances, with which she had nothing to do. Her brother was in the 1920s, the vice principal of Newington College in Teynampet. This was the `Princes' College of the South and it was here that he was killed one night — while his flighty, flirtatious wife slept through it all, if her story was to be believed. Several `Minors' were charged with the crime, but acquitted — with Mrs. De la Hey not available to give evidence, having been bundled out of the country by the embarrassed authorities. The garden house where the de la Heys lived and where the school functioned, Minor Bungalow, opposite the Congress Grounds, is now the office of the Director of Medical Services. As dilapidated as Capper House, it is more likely to be pulled down than restored, given its history of scandal, though it does have some striking architectural features.
S. MUTHIAH
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