The
Belmont tram was probably the most important of the Port of Spain tram lines,
as Belmont was the city's first suburb, densely populated. Belmont was
initially an area of coffee and sugar estates, but, like most other estates
surrounding the capital, those at Belmont had to be abandoned after the
emancipation of the slaves, when the former labourers turned to find work in
the city and shunned the estates. However, people still had to live somewhere,
and soon shacks and settlements began to spring up on the no longer cultivated
fields. Town planning was completely absent, and many of the curving streets
criss-crossing Belmont and the narrow little lanes where hardly a car can pass
date from the mid-19th century.
The
boundaries of Belmont are the Circular Road in the north, Observatory Street
and the East Dry River in the south, the Laventille hills in the east, and the
Queen's Park Savannah and St. Ann's River on the west.
But
even before the abolition of slavery in 1834, Belmont had an interesting
history of African settlement—here for once the term "African" is to
be taken literally and not as the lowest common denominator for political
purposes. As described in the article about the Company Villages in this
edition of the Digest, the British had abolished the slave trade in 1807. What
ensued was that the British Royal Navy proceded to patrol the west coast of
Africa to prevent slaves being taken to the New World by other nations or by
illegal British ships. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Africans were freed by
these patrols on the high seas, and some of them were brought to Trinidad.
Coming from various tribes—Yoruba, Rada, Mandingo, Ibo, Krumen and others—they
were given land at Belmont to settle. These Africans had never known slavery,
were free people and came with the whole cultural spectrm of village life,
priests, chiefs, tribal leaders, and often families. For a while, an area in
Belmont became known as Freetown, named for these African settlers, and street
names still commemorate those first men who lived there: Sampty Lande, La Rue
Rada, Mayock Place. Freetown extended from the East Dry River, at the north end
of Circular Road, and up into the Belmont Valley Road. In 1852 and 1866, other
liberated Africans were given land to settle beyond Erthig Road, and many of
the families living there are descendants of those.
In
his "Reminiscences of Old Trinidad", written by L.O. Innis in 1932,
he says about Belmont:
"In
the 1860s, Belmont was mostly unoccupied land, belonging to white Warner and
black Warner. The land over the Dry river known as Piccadilloy was called Grand
Jardin (great garden); further north in teh same direction was Mango Rose; and
more north, Belle Eau Road was known as Shapotie. The sugar factory stoo on
lands now occupied by St. Margaret's Church and a house of Erthig Road, still
existing and occupied, is thought to have been the estate manager's house. This
area, known as lands of White Warner, was bounded on the north and east by
Circular Road, on the west by the St. Ann's River, and on the south by Erthig
Road, with the exception of a small area around Industry Lane which was known
as black Warner's land. The old building of Mike's Taxi and Car Rentals is
thought to have been the house of black Warner."
Olga
Mavrogordato, in her book "Voices in the Street", quotes Sir Pelham
Warner from his book 'Long Innings':
"In
the fifties of the last cnetury, my father bought some twenty acres of land at
Belmont—within a quarter of a mile from Government House—and he left four
acres of these on which to build a church."
In
fact, the church records of St. Margaret's show that Mr. Charles W. Warner, the
then Attorney General of the island, gave two lots of land to build the church.
These two lots of land are on what is now the eastern part of the church
property. The Warner family was immortalised in the street names of that area,
e.g. Cadiz Road (Mr. Warner's wife was Ellen Rose Cadiz); Archer Street (which
should be Aucher, named after Aucher Warner, another Attorney General of the
island); and Pelham Street (after Sir Pelham Warner, the distinguished
cricketer quoted above). Charles W. Warner, whose grave you can visit in the
Botanical Gardens cemetery, was the person instrumental in making Angostura
Trinidadian: he facilitated the move of the Siegert family from Angostura in
Venezuela to Trinidad.
Before
1904, there existed the Belmont Asylum, which now has moved to St. Ann's and
became the "Mental Hospital". The Belmont Asylum had been founded in
1851 on the Circular Road, opposite to where the secondary school is now. Some
of the street names around where the asylum most likely was commemorate
planation owners of long ago, such as Smart Place and Weir Street.
Belmont
in the latter part of the 19th century also saw a large influx of West Indian
immigrants, namely from Barbados. Olga Mavrogordato links the wave of
immigration after 1879 to the failure of the French Panama canal scheme.
Belmont started to become a part of Port of Spain, which in those years was
very overcrowded. The suburb's streets were straightened and widened as much as
possible, but their winding character often remained. They were properly paved.
The old shacks were replaced by proper little wooden houses. Only very few of
these still stand in their quaint, picturesque gingerbread style; most of them
have been replaced by more or less ugly concrete structures (yours truly was
born and raised in one of the nostalgic wooden ones on Hermitage Road, which
probably had been built around the 1860s, when there were only two houses in
our street, the de Boissière's and the Henderson's).
In
connection with the Belmont tram, mention should be made of a Belmont character
named "Arthur Tramcar". The Belmont or blue tram started from the
railway station, went up Almond Walk, along Frederick Street, turning east at
Keate Street, up Charlotte Street and Queen’s Park East as far as the café and
the big silk cotton tree (which fell this year) at the corner of Belmont
Circular Road to return by the same route.
The
fare for each journey was 5 cents. Tickets could be purchased at six for one
shilling (24 cents). In 1895, the mules went into retirement and the trams were
electrified. The new trams, imported from Philadelphia, were painted red, blue
and green. They had seats that could be reversed by swinging round their backs.
It was forbidden to speak to the motorman, and one was warned to wait until the
car stopped before getting on or off. This did not prevent the famous city
personality ‘Arthur Tramcar’ from performing spectacular feats of acrobatics
on, in and around tramcars. He, to the delight of both passengers and
onlookers, would rush a tram, leap on to the running board, and perform several
cartwheels along the board that ran the length of the car, to jump off with the
flourish of an Olympic star.
A
lunatic rivalry commenced between Arthur and the motormen. Arthur took a bet
one time that he could run right through a tram as it passed the crossroads of
Erthig Road and Norfolk Street in Belmont, waited poised on Erthig Road, facing
east. His brand-new, white watchekongs gleamed in the sunlight. The tram,
traveling south on Norfolk, had picked up maximum speed from as far away north
as Clifford Street. Arthur pounced as the tram bolted past and emerged
triumphant on the other side of Erthig Road. For those of you who wondered, the
word ‘watchekongs’ is derived from an advertisement that described canvas shoes
as “Watch Your Corns”.
