Whenever I stay with my family in north Baltimore, I visit
Hampton National Historic Site to walk along its extensive grounds.
Construction on Hampton Hall began after 1783 and continued well into
the 1800s. The Ridgely family once owned 25,000 acres of land, as well
as a number of commercial, industrial, and agricultural interests that
allowed them to live well and entertain lavishly. They were able to
serve ice cream in July with stored ice, an expensive and time-consuming
commodity in 19th century America and Great Britain.
Hampton Mansion. The ice house sits at the right (not visible in this image.) Image @vsanborn
Hampton Mansion’s ice house is located near the circular drive and in
front of what once was the laundry. From a distance it resembles a
grassy knoll.
Ice House at Hampton NHS. Image @vsanborn
Ice House entrance. Image @vsanborn
The entrance is open to visitors. I clambered down the steep stairs
with Alan, a park ranger who kindly guided me down the dark pit.
Image @National Park Service
In winter, slaves or paid workers cut large blocks of ice
from frozen ponds on the property. They handed them up the hill on
sledges. The ice was shovelled through a hatch into the cone-shaped
cavity that extends 34 feet below ground.” – Text, National Park Service
Steep stairs down the ice house. Image @vsanborn
Men entered the cavity through the passage and packed the
ice down, often pouring water over it to make it freeze. As the ice
melted the mass slid down the cone-shaped pit but stayed compact.” –
Text, National Park Service
When the Ridgelys needed ice, a servant would descend
into the pit, chip off what was needed, and hoist or carry the load up a
ladder and out the passage.” – Text, National Park Service
The Ice House, Mumbai. Courtesy: Tata Central Archives
Scotch Church (left foreground) followed by the domed Ice House (used
for storing ice imported from North America), and the Law Court building
(Hornby House) beyond it.
Photograph entitled, "Scotch Church, Court-House, and entrance to the
Dock-Yard [Bombay]" of view looking north on Apollo Street, with the
Scotch Church (left foreground) followed by the domed Ice House (used
for storing ice imported from North America), and the Law Court building
(Hornby House) beyond it.
May 31, 2015 - ... Science and Technology · In Pictures · Announcements · Bookshop · Pulse ... How ice shipped all the way from America became a luxury item in colonial India ... This was the Bombay Ice House, built in 1843, which stood opposite ... that 350 barrels of apples had all turned rotten, but the American Ice ...
How ice shipped all the way from America became a luxury item in colonial India
In the 19th century, Boston businessman Frederic Tudor started shipping ice from the lakes of New England to the subcontinent.
Wikimedia Commons
A white round building, around 16 feet high, complete with
domed roof once stood on Apollo Road, now part of Shahid Bhagat Singh
Road in south Mumbai. This was the Bombay Ice House, built in 1843,
which stood opposite what was then the government dockyard, between the
Scottish Church and Hornby House – the latter was once the governor’s
house, then become a law court and then the Great Western Hotel. The Ice
House was a double-shelled structure and could hold around 150 tonnes
of ice.
For almost four decades, 1830 to the 1870, ice in the
presidency towns of British India was a luxury item, imported from New
England in the US North East. An essay by David Dickason, The19th century Indo-American Ice Trade, which appeared in the Modern Asian Studies journal in 1991 offers much insight into the subject.
As
early as 400 BC, Persian engineers had worked out a technique: ice
brought down from mountains was stored in large, thick-walled containers
that were placed underground and naturally cooled, according to the
essay. The Mughals used Himalayan ice but the British found it an
expensive proposition, maintaining ice fields that needed land and was
labour intensive, Dickason tells us. There was for long the Hooghly ice,
made by freezing water in shallow pits, but this came out quite gritty
and slushy and was never really potable.
The ice king
In
the 1830s, when Frederic Tudor built his fortunes on the ice trade, he
came quite rightly to be called the “ice king”. We learn from a website
on ice harvesting that he was born into a well-regarded Bostonian
family but that his fortunes thus far had been poor; even his early
investments in ice trade, namely shipping it to states in southern US
and the Caribbean, had been only marginal successes. It was his
desperation to avoid jail as a debtor when his investments in the coffee
trade came to bust that made Tudor enter the risky venture of shipping
ice to British India in Calcutta. His collaborators were Samuel Austin
and William Rogers, the latter agreeing to become the ice agent for the
trade partners in Calcutta.
American merchants had begun trading
in India in 1778 when Lord Cornwallis extended the opportunities to
them, but transporting and trading in ice was a different matter
altogether. It was 1833 and voyage time across the Atlantic and Indian
Oceans normally took four months. But in the last decade of the 19th
century, innovations in the ice-harvesting business made such voyages a
possibility.
Some of these were largely made by Nathaniel Jervis
Wyeth, an associate of Tudor’s, but they would soon fall out. Wyeth
invented a twin-bladed, horse-drawn ice-cutter, which meant that ice
sheets could be cut up into big squares and then pried out with iron
bars. This saved time and increased the productivity of men and
horses. These giant cubes could also be packed tightly to quell melting.
Wyeth experimented in methods of insulating the ice on board ships,
developing for instance, double-walled storehouses insulated with saw
dust or tan, a product of tanneries, and accessible from the roof, to
reduce the melting inevitable during a long voyage.
On May 12,
1833, the ship Tuscany, sailed from Boston for Calcutta, carrying 180
tonnes of ice. When it docked at Calcutta on September 6, the ship still
had 100 tonnes of ice in its hold. People who gathered were amazed at
the giant, icy cubes as they were unloaded and were described by a
contemporary historian in his book, available online,
on the development of the Massachusetts ice trade as “crystal blocks of
Yankee coldness”. A local who reached forward to touch the ice,
believed he had been “burnt”, considerably alarming the other onlookers.
Another asked the captain of the ship whether ice grew on trees in
America.
Thriving trade
The export of
American ice to India soon flourished. Compared with the varieties at
that time, this kind of ice was seen as pristine. Massachusetts, located
in the high latitudes and on the eastern shores of the Atlantic,
produced substantial ice in its freshwater lakes. The purity of the ice
cut from Wenham Lake, for instance, which was shipped to London,
impressed contemporary scientists such as Michael Faraday, who concluded
that this ice melted slowly because it did not contain salt and air
bubbles.
Over the next three decades, Calcutta and other
presidency towns would become Tudor's most lucrative destinations,
bringing him immense profits and making him a millionaire many times
over.
Henry David Thoreau, who witnessed ice harvesting in Walden Pond, around which he lived for some years, wrote in 1854 that “the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta drink at my well.”
But
of course, the ice from Walden served the elite Anglian society in the
cities, and Tudor secured numerous favours and exemptions from the
British. For instance, in the very first trip, William Rogers, the ice
agent, secured a few exemptions: the ice was transported directly to
warehouses without waiting for customs house formalities. Unloading the
ice at night was permitted. In Bombay, ice ships received a favoured
docking place and were made duty-free.
In the next few years, ice
houses were built by raising funds within the community and then leased
out to Tudor at a nominal rent. Tudor’s second voyage, which he
financed on his own, could well have been a disaster, considering that
350 barrels of apples had all turned rotten, but the American Ice
Committee in Calcutta and Governor General Lord Bentinck took a
surprisingly lenient view. Tudor secured a monopoly on the trade in ice,
and New England apples, as well as Spanish grapes and American butter,
transported along with the ice also soon became expensive, coveted items
of trade. Moreover, the ice house was expanded at public expense.
In
Bombay, the firm of Jahangir Nuseervanji Wadia distributed the ice and
Jamshetji Jeejeebhoy was the first to dispense ice creams at a dinner
party. When several among the guests contracted a cold, the Gujarati Bombay Samachar
opined that this was a worthy price to pay. In Calcutta, Dwarkanath
Tagore expressed an interest to involve himself in ice shipping, but
Tudor’s monopoly stayed for some decades more.
Between the years
1856 and 1882, 353,450 tonnes of ice had been shipped out all across
South and East Asia and also Australia. Some of the ice was reserved
for medical hospitals in the presidency towns, and in years of low
supply, ice was rationed.
Decline and fall
Modern
methods of ice-making soon made their advent around the 1870s. Tudor
himself died in 1864 and the business passed onto other hands. With
industrialisation and the construction of railway lines, there was also
more pollution around Boston, which probably affected the quality of the
ice. Thoreau noted that timber was cut down from around Walden Pond for
the railway lines. Ice companies were formed in India too: the Bengal
Ice Company was the first, set up in 1878. Ship-building became
increasingly expensive. Ice plants increased in India following the
spread of the railway line: 25 in 1904, 66 in 1925.
The Calcutta
Ice house was razed to the ground in 1882, the Bombay one served as a
warehouse till it was demolished in 1920s. The one in Chennai alone
stands today; it was remodelled with circular verandahs and multiple
windows to make a residence. Despite its poor ventilation, it did work
for some time as a shelter for poor students. It is believed that
Vivekananda during his travels through India stayed here for some time.
Besides
Thoreau’s mention of ice cutters, this trade, strangely, finds little
mention in the literature of the times. An exception is Rudyard Kipling.
In his story, ‘The Undertakers’ in the Second Jungle Book, he
mentions it in a conversation that takes place between a bird, a
crocodile and a jackal in which the bird describes his feelings after
having swallowed a seven-pound lump of Wenham Lake ice:
"When
I was in my third season, a young and a bold bird, I went down to the
river where the big boats come in. The boats of the English are thrice
as big as this village.
"From the insides of this boat they were
taking out great pieces of white stuff, which, in a little while, turned
to water. Much split off, and fell about on the shore, and the rest
they swiftly put into a house with thick walls. But a boatman, who
laughed, took a piece no larger than a small dog, and threw it to me. I –
all my people – swallow without reflection, and that piece I swallowed
as is our custom. Immediately I was afflicted with an excessive cold
which, beginning in my crop, ran down to the extreme end of my toes, and
deprived me even of speech, while the boatmen laughed at me. Never have
I felt such cold. I danced in my grief and amazement till I could
recover my breath and then I danced and cried out against the falseness
of this world; and the boatmen derided me till they fell down. The chief
wonder of the matter, setting aside that marvellous coldness, was that
there was nothing at all in my crop when I had finished my lamentings!"
Sep 13, 2010 - The first shipment of ice imported to India soon fires up a market for cold drinks ... Photo: Essex Institute Historical Collections ... An article titled "The Ice Trade Between America and India," published ... As trade took off, ice was stored in ice houses built in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. ...
A hand-coloured print of Ice House, Calcutta, from the Fiebig Collection: ... Print image ... Ice Houses were built in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras by Fredric Tudor, ... who first brought ice to India in 1833 on a ship called 'The Clipper Tuscany'. ... the ice houses were no longer needed to store the ice imported from America.
The Ice House Calcutta by Frederick Fiebig 1851
From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repositorySize
The
Ice House. A pink, part-circular, wedding cake-like building on the
Chennai sea front. It hasn't stored ice for well over a century. But
that's how this extraordinary building is still generally known.
It
was built in 1842 - one of three ice houses in India established by the
Boston-based 'ice king' Frederic Tudor, and the only one of the three
to survive. And yes, it really did store ice, transported all the way
from New England.
Tudor
hit on the idea of harvesting ice from the freshwater lakes of New
England (it was after all free), using sawdust for insulation, and then
sending the ice out from Boston where ships often travelled empty to the
Caribbean and further afield. Yes, a lot of the ice melted - but enough
made the journey, and was sufficiently prized, to earn a profit. A
decent profit to judge by the splendour of this building.
The poet and essayist Henry David Thoreau saw ice being harvested for Tudor at Walden Pond in the winter of 1846-7. 'The sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well', Thoreau wrote. 'This pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.'
By
the 1880s, the long distance ice business declined as other ways of
making ice came to prominence. The Ice House changed use. In 1897, Swami
Vivekananda stayed in the building during a crucial period in his
preaching, having just returned from the Parliament of Religions in
Chicago.The
building is now known as Vivekananda House and houses an exhibition
about the man. That's cool! But then, this place is built to be cool..
Sailors transporting ice to India on board the British troop ship HMS Serapis, 1875. Dinodia Photos/Alamy
When the British swaggered into India
in the 18th century, they were paralyzed by the sun-charred summers of
the country they had colonized. Many would peel away to the hills for
the summer. Others, marooned in the blistering cities, indulged in
plenty of mawkish whining. Plain Tales of the Raj, for
instance, records one Reginald Savory grumbling, “The wind drops, the
sun gets sharper, the shadows go black and you know you’re in for five
months of utter physical discomfort.”
The British found various coping
mechanisms to tame the season’s cauterizing heat. They slept sashed and
scarved in water-drenched garments. They sloshed ice from northern
India’s rivers, then drew it to the plains at tremendous expense. They
hired abdars to cool water, wine, and ale with saltpetre.
They hung wet tatties (mats) made of cooling khus (a type of grass) on
their windows and doors. Ice pits were built and small pots of water
placed outside on wintry nights. In the morning, the coating of ice that
formed was sliced away and stored in the pits, but this ice was usually
too gritty and slushy to be consumed.
Enter Frederic Tudor, a Bostonian
entrepreneur, astute and indefatigable. Tudor dreamt of ice, cut from
the ponds of native New England, and sent to hotter climes on
constellations of ships. Through the years, he was staggered by
bankruptcy, by vagaries of weather, and by the derision of sceptical
peers who couldn’t imagine ice surviving such a long sea voyage. “No
joke,” reported the Boston Gazette, on Tudor’s first voyage. “A
vessel with a cargo of 80 tons of ice has cleared out from this port
for Martinique. We hope this will not prove to be a slippery
speculation.”
A view of Mumbai, early 1900s. Dinodia Photos/Alamy
It wasn’t. Tudor solved the full puzzle
of harvesting, insulating, and transporting ice long distances. By the
time he turned his gaze to India, he had already infiltrated New Orleans
and the Caribbean.
In 1833, he sent forth his first ship to
Calcutta. It was packed with 180 tons of pristine ice culled from the
lakes of Massachusetts, mantled in sawdust, belted into the ship’s hold
in double-planked containers, and sent scudding towards India. Together
with the ice went barrels of Baldwin apples—a more reliable export.
Four months later, when Tuscany
sailed grandly into Calcutta on September 6, 1833, a thrum of residents
beetled their way to the docks to ogle with wonderment at this strange,
foreign marvel. It is said that one Calcutta dweller enquired whether
ice flowered on trees in America. Another laid his palm on the ice for
several minutes, then, jarred by the inevitable blisters on his palm,
screamed that he had been scorched as by fire. Yet another urbanite, J H
Stocqueler, editor of The Englishman, was in bed when he was
woken by the cries of his orderly, vivid with excitement at the news.
Tottering back with a piece of this precious cargo, the orderly, alas,
neglected to swathe “the ice in cloth nor close the basket lest the ice
became too warm.” Consequently, he returned with a nail-thin chink of
ice. Some Indians, alarmed at the ice’s brisk disappearance, demanded
their money back.
Nevertheless, the ice trade became an
astounding triumph, spreading to Madras and Bombay. Along with the ice,
Tudor ignited a frenzy for American imports including New England apples
and American butter. His business grew fat on a government-supported
monopoly and concessions to import tax-free ice. Enormous icehouses
began to pock the streets of Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras.
Tudor’s ice trade, swollen with success,
began to be noticed by Americans—most famously, Henry David Thoreau
wrote fleetingly about it in Walden: “Thus it appears that the
sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and
Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well.” Tudor became the millionaire Ice King, snagging himself a 19-year-old bride when he was 50 and fathering six children.
At the vanguard of this trade were private clubs in India,
set up by the colonizers as offerings of an Elysian British experience,
complete with uniformed wait staff serving roast beef and boiled mutton
to the administrative elite. The clubs invested heavily in the
construction of ice houses; consequently, their dining tables teemed
with cold drinks and well-preserved meat. In Bombay, for instance, the
Byculla Club ordered 40 tons to be delivered by May 1840, the beginning
of summer.
The dining room inside the Byculla Club. Public Domain
Ice also functioned as a palliative for
an antiphony of illnesses, from fever and stomach disorders to kidney
defects. During ice “famines” (when ships were delayed), it could only
be purchased in limited quantities, and anyone wanting a sliver more
needed a doctor’s note. Easy availability of ice became so entrenched
that one famine in 1850 produced gales of outrage in Bombay, with the Telegraph and Courier even calling for an agitation.
But while ice from New England was a boon for British colonizers, for Indians, it proved mainly another burden.
It was a delirium of differences. Most
Indians, far too poor to purchase such frivolities as American frozen
water, and already burdened by heavy taxes, were further throttled by
taxation used for building (and later expanding) the icehouses. There
were also more humble casualties—the ice trade whittled away at the jobs of the abdars, rendering their positions obsolete. Some Indians availed of ice in major hospitals; many more barely laid their hands on it.
Still, there were exceptions. The first
cargo of ice, for instance, was consigned to a Parsi firm, Messrs
Jehangir Nusserwanji Wadia. (The Parsis are a tiny community of Indian Zoroastrians, with roots in Iran.) The firm then disseminated the ice to a clamor of Britishers.
Vivekananda House, built for ice storage, in Chennai, India. ajith achuthan/Alamy
Sir Jamsetji Jeejeebhoy, a wealthy Parsi
merchant and philanthropist, and the first Indian baronet, was another
such. Jeejeebhoy was the first to offer ice cream at a large public
reception. Guests gorged on them. A few days later, the Bombay Samachar
newspaper wrote priggishly that the hosts and the guests had since been
besieged with colds, but having had the temerity to try this “foreign”
food, a cold was a fitting penalty.
By 1860, though, ice was no longer
considered a treat. “Like most of the conveniences which habit renders
familiar, the ice has almost ceased to be a luxury,” wrote the British
artist Colesworthy Grant, from Calcutta,
in a letter to his mother, “and though little children still continue
to seek and to suck it as though it were a sweetmeat, they no longer
consider it as the novelty which, when first holding it in their nearly
paralyzed fingers, they declared, in amazement, had burnt them!”
Tudor’s vice-grip on the ice trade
continued until the 1860s, until, enfeebled by old age, his hold wore
thin. Massachusetts lakes, smothered with pollution from new steam
railways, lost their allure. Simultaneously, artificial ice-manufacturing units
(the first being the Bengal Ice Company) entered the trade, while a
skein of new railway lines made it easier to transport the goods around
India.
Today, the idea of an ice
trade seems almost chimerical. Freezers in Indian homes hold creamy
discs of kulfi, while refrigerator shelves are heaped with Thums Up,
Sosyo, and other carbonated delights. But a lone ice house still stands
near Chennai’s Presidency College. Once containing blocks of ice, it
later housed, at various times, a High Court judge, a clutch of poor
students, and the Indian sage Swami Vivekananda. Today, most traces of
Tudor have been wiped away. Rather poignantly, it is now named
Vivekananda House, a paean to the monk and mystic who spread awareness
of Hindu Vedanta philosophy around the world and across the seas to the
United States.
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