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History of Lodge Perfect Unanimity - EC 150

CHARITY 1850-1 960

Incomplete records make it impossible to give a complete account of P.U. 's charitable performance.. In the 1850's, so far as is known P.U. supported the Male and Female Orphan Asylums. (These were later called the Civil Orphan Asylums. Their present-day descendant is St. George's School and Orphanage). The Lodge was also called upon to help in private cases of financial hardship amongst its members or among Masons visiting Madras. Unfortunately, as there are no minutes extant relating to the period of the Indian Mutiny and Crimean War, it is impossible to assess what demands those events made upon the Lodge.

It was not until May3rd 1886 that someone thought of passing round the charity-box at regular meetings. Before then, the Brethren helped the deserving as need arose. The W.M. had the right, which he often exercised, of making emergency payments of Rs.50, and local charities were well supported. When the W.M.'s Rs.50 proved inadequate for the relief of suffering, the practice was to circulate a subscription list. The Secretary announced an appeal, opened an account in the name of a particular cause, and closed it after a reasonable time. This was the standard method of raising charitable funds during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and if the amounts raised are any guide, it was a very effective system.

From the late 1870's the Lodge maintained a "Charity Fund" to which monies were transferred from the General Fund of the Lodge. Sometimes this fund was used to supplement amounts raised by means of the Secretary's subscription lists.

To see what all this meant in human terms; let us consider one particular example. In 1877, Bro. R.S., a Lodge Officer for that year, was smitten with paralysis, and was granted Rs.300 from Lodge Funds. Most probably this amount was intended to pay his passage back to England, for in December 1877 he was granted "another a sterling amount" - and the Treasurer proposed circulating an appeal for individual subscriptions. The Lodge once again helped him by raising funds for him to travel to Burma for employment and condoned his non-payment of dues and, with the permission of the DGL, issued a no-dues certificate.

One might suppose that the liberal expenditure on the relief of private hardship might inhibit subscription to more public causes, especially in view of the large sums required (see Chapter 4) for the upkeep of the Lodge premises. But not a bit of it. During the years 1891 to 1900 when the rupee - ut ferunt fabulae - really was worth something, an average of Rs. 446 was contributed to the M.M.I. The Lodge paid Rs. 500 to become a Life Member of the M.M.I. in 1880, and by 1905 the chairs of the Lodge down to J.D. were endowed as Life Governors, at Rs. 100 per chair.

Rarely did a worthy cause go unheeded by P.U., whether it was a typhoid epidemic in Worthing (1893), a famine in N,W. India (1897), an earthquake in the Punjab (1905) or Baluchistan (1927), or an appeal from prisoners of war in Germany (1918). There were also many instances of charity to individuals.

Upto the Great War, the Lodge was so taken up with Madras affairs that it contributed comparatively little as a Lodge to the Home Charities of which there were then three (the R.M.B.I., the R.M.I.B., and the R.M.I.G.). Members may well have contributed their share privately, but data to prove this cannot now be assembled. Indeed it is an old tradition in the Lodge that members prefer to make their charitable donations privately rather than in the name of the Lodge.

As on December 31St 1960, the Lodge had the following charitable distinctions: R.M.I.G. Patron (1953) First subscription 1794 R.M.I.B. Vice-Patron (1958) " " 1916 R.M.B.I. Vice-Patron (1956) " " 1921 R.M. Hospital Patron (1941) " " 1914

The Lodge had qualified as a founding member of the Freemasons' Hospital and Nursing Home, Chelsea, The Lodge became a Patron of the Royal Masonic Hospital on 16th November 1941.

It remains to mention the Samaritan Fund, which had been inaugurated in London after the First World War. The Fund was intended to pay for the medical treatment of those Masons who were unable to meet even the low charges of the Freemasons' Hospital. As it happened, PU. had been putting money aside during the war for a rather similar purpose, and by the end of 1919 had a total of Rs. 2286.8.5 in what the Lodge minutes call the War Fund. As soon as the Brethren heard of the formation of the Samaritan Fund, they sent this amount to the Samaritan Fund Secretary, together with a further hundred guineas, which made the Lodge a Founding Lodge of that Fund.

Members' predilection for contributing individually their share to charities has already been mentioned. It is only during the last thirty years or so that there are any sort of statistics to indicate the amounts subscribed personally by the Brethren. These statistics are derived from the operation of the P.U. Charity Association, which was a scheme introduced by Bro. H.G. (later Wor. Bro. Sir Henry) Howard who was Almoner in 1933. Before then charity had been administered as need arose, and there was, as we have seen, a tendency to neglect the great 'English charitable institutions. The effectiveness of the P.U.C.A. may be judged from the fact that the at the end 1960 donations through the scheme from individual members had reached the following totals:

£ s d The Royal Masonic Institution for Girls 495 12 0 The Royal Masonic Institution for Boys 460 13 10 The Royal Masonic Benevolent Institution 352 16 0 The Royal Masonic Hospital 1043 11 3

2532 13 1

Since August 1947 a further Masonic Charity has arisen in Madras. The D.G.M. (Rt. Wor. Bro. T.V. Muthukrishna Aiyar) invited the Brethren of the District to subscribe funds towards the establishment of a Masonic Nursing Home. From 1947 to 1955 funds came in slowly and only Rs. 60,000 was collected. In 1956, however, a D.G.L. Organising Committee was appointed and worked to such effect that over Rs. 200,000 was collected by the end of 1960. Of this sum PU. subscribed Rs. 2750.38 np. It is interesting to note.(though it means going a little beyond the period scheduled for treatment in this Chapter) that the Nursing Home is no longer a project but a reality. Since March 1961, four rooms have been rented at the Pandalai Nursing Home ("Binfield", Poonamallee High Road) for use by deserving Masons.

This then, is the broad general account of PU's charity over 110 years. Nowadays charity seems to be more of the organised kind described in the preceding paragraph, than of the personal kind familiar to Masons half a century ago. Perhaps we may account for this by observing that society itself is becoming increasingly organised and charitable, and that cases of great and desperate need are becoming mercifully fewer.

PU AND SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS

Important events, political and scientific, lay ahead of PU's founders and their successors, but it was the scientific rather than the political events which exercised the greater influence on the daily lives of Lodge members. The present chapter is, therefore, devoted to a consideration of those developments which must have been of great personal importance to them.

Let us first consider travel to and from Madras. In 1786, the journey was usually made by sailing ship via the Cape of Good Hope. The service was not regular, although it was long (four to ten months) and expensive (£70 to £250). Occasionally (and small wonder) some people were prepared to risk an overland journey via Basra and Constantinople, or via Tibet and Russia.

Steamships did not appear in Eastern waters until 1825, and it was not until 1830 that travellers from India began to use the overland route across Egypt. At first the journey was via Kosseir and Khenna, and thence down the Nile to Alexandria.

In 1843, however, the P and 0 opened its service between Calcutta and Suez, using two wooden paddle-steamers, the Hindostan and the Bentinck. This provided the citizens of Madras with the first regular steamship service to England. From Suez, the traveller journeyed to Alexandria where he boarded the P and 0's other vessel, the Oriental, which took him on to Falmouth or, as time went on, Southampton, Liverpool or London. The actual time taken in one recorded transit to Falmouth in 1843 was 47 days, of which thirty days were spent in Egypt.

The 1850's saw the gradual change from paddles to screw-propulsion, and the 1860's were notable because they contained (1869) the opening of the Suez Canal. Travel between Bombay and England was now reduced to something like twenty days at most. By 1950, about 80% of all ships were oil-burners, and the sea journey between Bombay and London could be as short as twelve days. Until the Second World War, Brethren sometimes had to endure the trials of sharing their berths, at sea as well as on land, with poochies, since effective insecticide paints were not widely used until the war ended. Stabilisers, too, were a post-war development.

On October 15th 1932 Madras became a port of call for Tata's Puss Moth air service which brought mail from Karachi and Bombay. This was the first hint of a regular air service linking Madras with other parts of India and the world. Until 1939, air travel was something of a novelty, and most Brethren went on leave and returned to India by ship as their predecessors had done. In 1950, sea passages from Madras to London. cost from £80 to £135, while the air fare between Madras and London was about £160, and the journey took 24 hours.

Until the first few years of the 1850's the horse was the standard means of getting from one place to another. The horse was the only practical means of conducting outstation tours, and those who travelled light relied on the occasional dak bungalow for food and rest. Pegu ponies, especially, were noted for their stamina and usefulness on outstation journeys. Before 1850, those who did not ride horses travelled by palanquin..

In June 1853, Sir Henry Pottinger, Governor of Madras, cut the first turf towards the construction of the Madras Railway, and therewith the mechanisation of transport in South India began. The Madras Railway was opened for traffic between Madras and Arcot in 1856. To their Brethren in Lodge, their engineering feats meant quick trips to salubrious hill-stations, and ample supplies of tomatoes and lettuces for the festive boards (and also for Madras tables generally).

The real mechanisation of land transport came, of course, not with the train but with the internal combustion engine in all its forms.. Until about 1925 motorcycles and cars were fairly rare, even though the first one had appeared on Mount Road as far back as 1894. Bra. W.H. Oakes, who was PU's J.W. in 1893 was involved in the import of cars into the City. The first reference to cars in the PU minutes is when they were quoted on December 6th 1926 as having caused an obstruction in the porch of the temple.

Almost hand in hand with the development of the railways went the overland (and overseas) telegraph. In 1853, a director of Parrys, Henry Nelson, who was also S.W. of PU in 1849, sent a message from Madras to Marseilles in three days for the princely sum of Rs. 10. 'Princely' is probably the right expression, for there were then many Indians in comparatively good jobs who did not earn that much in a month. Small wonder is it therefore that we have to wait sometime before there is some mention of the telegraph in PU's minutes. But there it is: on December7th 1855 there is a note that Bro. J.A. Davies sent his apologies for absence by telegram.

The telephone was an instrument which took longer to perfect and establish than the telegraph. There were telephones in Madras in 1881, but they cannot have amounted to much. It is known that automatic dialling was introduced in Madras as long ago as 1926, and that at about that date underground cable, which was less susceptible to storm damage and interference, began to supercede overhead wiring, and make the telephone an altogether more convenient instrument to use.

It was not until that year that Lodge summonses began to go out by post to local recipients. One imagines that, so far as local deliveries were concerned, the Brethren had previously trusted the peon they knew, rather than the postman they did not. Our Pre-1917 Brethren were not above using the public overseas postal service, which conveyed G.L. Certificates from London to Madras by mail steamer.

The airmail postal service, which, as we have seen, was not available in 1923, was not far off. Airmail began to operate between India and England in 1929. This really did quicken up the pace a bit. No longer could a Brother arrange his leisure and his work to meet the comparatively infrequent emergencies of steamer arrivals. No longer could he say on a Wednesday: "Golf today and golf tomorrow, for the steamer won't be here till Saturday". If work was there he now had to do it at once, for he had acquired a new taskmaster - the aeroplane.

The printing machine is, of course, very old, but for reasons of costs or security, perhaps PU did not use it very much until 1897 when the Secretary began to send out printed summonses. The earliest record of PU's use of the printing machine, however, dates from the early nineteenth century. The Lodge records state that printed invitations were sent out to those invited to the Lodge ball in 1810. It is difficult to say precisely when typewriters first entered into Lodge affairs. They were not manufactured in commercial quantities until 1873, and it was not until 1878 that they had both capital and small letters on them. The Lodge employed a writer until 1920, when, according to the minutes, the Secretary and Treasurer both said that their clerks could attend to the work formerly done by the writer. Since we know that typewriters were common by 1920, the inference ist hat the Lodge's correspondence became partially mechanised in that year.

From Jutkas to Jumbos or we might even say from legged Jumbos to Jumbos on wheels-within the space of P.U.'s life. However, in many parts of the country our peons, couriers and even pigeons of yesteryear, appear to be more reliable than our telephone system. In the last twenty years, this is one aspect of our communication system which has not kept pace with other developments. Happily, though, change is round the corner, and the District Grand Lodge has been one of the first to be connected to the Nungambakkam Electronic Exchange, situated on Haddows Road- which isdefinitely an improvement on the earlier Crossbar (and 'Cross-talk) exchanges.

In terms of scientific progress, computers have now arrived on the Madras scene together with at least two retails stores selling only computers - something that even a decade ago would have been unimaginable. This history of the Lodge was set on a word-processor in Madras, using a WORDSTAR programme another first for P.U., perhaps!

The computer and communications have certainly changed things at PU. Our minute books, the various returns and the summons are still on paper. However, the internet has changed our communication pattern. The day is not far off when our summons will be sent by e-mail. The writing or typing of letters and licking stamps have almost reached an end; the current secretary of PU has sent only one letter by mail in the entire year of 2002; yet there is close interaction among the members due to e-mail.

Perhaps one of the greatest benefits conferred on South India by nineteenth century Europe was electricity. Although generators were available as long ago a 1879, it was not until the turn of the century that electric power became fairly widespread, and it was only in 1906 that the Madras Electric Supply Corporation began to provide the public with electric current. As recorded in an earlier chapter, PU may have met under electric light in 1890, though a more certain date is 1907. Electric fans did not become common in Madras offices until about 1920. Even then they were not common in residential quarters, where the inhabitants were subjected to the spasmodic enthusiasm of capricious punkah-wallahs.

When the new Freemasons' Hall was completed in 1925, it was very modern for those days, and was provided with electric fans. In 1986 as a part of the bi-centenary celebrations PU refurbished the small temple in the ground floor of the Hall; for the first time aircondiitoners were installed. In 2001 all the temples were air-conditioned during the complete refurbishing of the main building. Plans are on hand to air-condition the banqueting halls also.

Another blessing conferred by electricity was the refrigeration of food. In the 1850's, the Brethren of PU, like other citizens of Madras preserved their food and cooled their drinks by means of ice from the Ice House which was built on Marina in 1841. This ice came from America fairly regularly, except when the United States was at war. The outbreak of the United States Civil War (1861-65) caused Madras to think about other ways of getting ice. At first ice was made by chemical means, and then later electricity came along, and provided us with the electric refrigerator which began to get into vogue in the 1930's and by 1960 had become standard household equipment.