CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
to reach the roof, the murderer keeping them at bay by pulling up the balustrades, and throwing the masonry on them in the narrow passage—broke loopholes in the wall of the staircase, and shot him dead, in the sight of an immense crowd gathered below.
The house was afterwards rented to Government by Mr. Speke for the Sudder Dewanny Court, and led to the name of the street being changed from Speke Road to Sudder Street, a name which it bears to this day.
The custom of naming streets after the most important resident has perpetuated the memory of Sir Henry Russell, a former Chief Justice; of Sir John Royds, a judge of the Supreme Court, who lived in the house afterwards the Doveton College; and of Lieutenant Camac, an Engineer officer, who, when the town was spreading southward, took up land in a hitherto unbuilt locality, and erected dwelling-houses as a speculation—as did Colonel Wood, another Engineer officer, on an adjoining piece of land.
Park Street, as all Calcutta residents are aware, received its name at a time when the more sensitive ears of a later generation were offended by the blunt "Burying Ground Road" of their predecessors. The "Park" was formed by the extensive grounds of a house in which
210
