husbands would be returning. The soldiers, having finished their drill, were sitting down before their wooden platters to breakfast, and the sun burned fiercely overhead. At the bidding of their mistresses the slaves hoisted the laden market-baskets on to their heads, and the English ladies hurried back to their homes inside the fort.
It was a dirty, squalid Blacktown, albeit a very happy one as a rule. The contrast between it and the well-laid out, carefully preserved fort distressed the worthy merchants. In vain they represented to the citizens, through the headmen of their castes, that cleanliness was desirable and beneficial. The citizens of Blacktown did not wish to be clean. It was their time-honoured custom to throw their household rubbish into the streets, where children and pigs gamboled among buffaloes and goats, and they said that it was good enough for them. When they wanted it cleaner, they would clean it themselves.
The municipal difficulties of the merchants were reported to the Board at home, and the master-mind of Josiah Child was brought to bear upon the subject. He gave Blacktown a mayor and corporation, and the town was raised to the dignity of a municipal city (1687). It was an unexpected, unsolicited honour, and one that was not appreciated at the time, although it has made Madras the oldest municipal town in India. There was no pride about Blacktown in those days, and its mayoralty was a kind of white elephant to it. The civic functionary and his council might be elected, but they could not conjure up by virtue of their office the town hall and the public buildings, which Josiah Child pictured when he sent out the charter, the maces, and the robes of office. In happy ignorance of the customs of the Hindus, the masterful chairman of the directors fondly hoped that the robes of office would be an attraction to the native citizen, and lure him on to appear as a candidate for an aldermanic
