Electric City Part 3

As the end of the 19th century neared, the social fabric of Trinidad began to show a move towards modernity. This was demonstrated in several ways, for example, a notice was published in the newspapers on the 25th January, 1895, that "all transvestite dressing was prohibited". This was, of course, directed at masqueraders, but it also reflected what the "better-thinking people" had taken up arms about.

The city's streets had also been given a thorough face lift. Asphalt was used for the very first time in 1890. Mr. Tanner, the town superintendent, put a paving on Clarence Street (upper Frederick Street) and Oxford Street. He carefully made them convex for the rainwater to run off. This, however, upset a lot of people, especially people with horse-drawn buggies and caps. It would appear that the paving caused horses to slip and fall, and buggies to tip over? Sounds familiar for those who try to drive up Cascade main road after the recent paving exercise without sacrificing their car axles in foot-deep crevices on the either side of the road?

Be that as it may, Tobago had recently (1889) been joined to Trinidad in a somewhat arbitrary manner. In so doing, the colony of Trinidad and Tobago had come into being. Already, there was the telephone which was regarded as plain miraculous. The island's economy was sound - at least for those with access to it. The middle classes were buttressed to a degree, with an access to funds derived from small and medium cocoa estates. Repeatability was the order of the day, and in looking at old photographs, what strikes on first is that everybody is wearing a hat! All men wore suits and ladies' dresses were at ankle length. It was still a charcoal-burning society. Everybody cooked on coal pots, and although there was pipe-borne water for many, very few possessed indoor toilets called W.C., water closets.

Into this scene, the marvel of electricity was introduced by the young American entrepreneur, Edgar Tripp. In 1892, Tripp leased a parcel of land from the Port of Spain Borough Council. What he had in mind was the setting up of an electricity plant. The land he leased was the southernmost end of the old Ariapita Estate. The area was known as Shine's Pasture and already produced a type of energy and generated fuel: grass. As a grass market, it supplied fodder to the city's hundreds of horses. For $100 a year, paid to the Council, Edgar Tripp set about setting up his plant. The Council was in support of his plan to light the town, as an ordinance had been put into place since 1887 to facilitate this event. There was, however, one problem. It had to do with the removal of the city's rubbish dump. In typical style, which has not changed much over the years, there was much wrangling and elaborate bureaucracy. Tripp was made of other stuff and commenced planting poles in Port of Spain and stringing up wires over the existing telephone lines. The limited liability company he formed was called "The Electric Light and Power Company". He registered it at the Red House, which was not red yet, on 5th July, 1894. His board of directors were William Gordon Gordon, chairman, W.S. Robertson, Eugene Cipriani and Lucien Ambard. Tripp was the company's secretary.

The contract with the Borough Council was signed by George Grant, who was not a member of the board, but who was soon to go into business with William Gordon Gordon and form the firm Gordon Grant & Co. Ltd. The contract stipulated that by the end of August 1894, the town was to be lit up by electric power.

The officials of the telephone company began to be alarmed by the work being done by Tripp's workmen. They took objection to the electric wires being strung above their own. They felt that if the wires were to come into contact, a fire would be started which could damage their telephone exchange.

Council member Mzumbo Lazare felt that electric wires should be run underground, but his suggestion, a good one, had come too late in the day. The electric engines arrived at the docks, accompanied by Mr. Kuhn, an engineer. There also were dynamos. No one had ever seen a dynamo; it was a very modern term. Part of the installations was also a huge boiler with a tall smoke stack. To facilitate the stringing of the wires, the city's trees had to be trimmed. T

here were questions asked in the Legislative Council: "Is the government satisfied that all precautions have been taken against the risk of accident to life in the erection of overhead wires in the streets of Port of Spain?" This was raised by Conrad Stollmeyer, chairman of the Commercial Telephone Company. Walsh Wrtightson, the newly arrived director of Public Works, put everyone at ease by saying that overhead wires were not at all a problem, inasmuch as they existed all over the world.

Edgar Tripp had done his work remarkably well, and was, in fact, ahead of schedule by a week. Great excitement swept the town on Tuesday 25 February, 1895. As the sun set, instead of the dim kerosene lamps that had previously lit the town, the much brighter electric light appeared. "There was a great deal of enthusiasm shown by the crowds on the streets when the lights shone forth and great crowds collected under each lamp and discussed the characteristics of this new agency by which night is to be made more like day." 

Edgar Tripp had turned night into day. The wife of the governor, Lady Napier Broome, took a cricket team visiting from England on a tour of the town, especially kept alight on her bequest. Tripp rode through the town on his buggy, inspecting the new facilities wherever he went. He was received with much applause.

Government House was, of course, electrified and so too the Queen's Park hotel in which Edgar Tripp had a major interest. Times had really changed.

Well, next time you put on your computer to surf the internet, fully aware that you are part of the future, spare a thought for the young American who first put power into place to take you there.

Indian Religion

In the first decades of the Victorian era, 1837 - 1851, the world, that is the world of Britain's fledgling second empire, was already putting into place the social patterns of race, religion and class prejudice. Previously, all this essentially were the perview of the aristocracy, but with the emerging middle class, underpinned by the industrial revolution of the mid-19th century, and Britain's unrivaled success in the European wars at the end of the previous century, attitudes and a sense of overall superiority were readily in the hands of the most ordinary people.

It was fashionable to be intolerant and disdainful of all other who in their misfortune were seen as different. In these Islands, the British administrators had enough problems with the 'high-toned' French and their touchy coloured cousins. The former slaves, now freed, were left to their own devices under the law of cause to assimilate as best they could.

But it was the Indians, arriving at a rate, who put a different spin on subjects like religion. Their culture, the faiths that they possessed, contributed to their being viewed at the bottom rung of society.

Christianity was the accepted form; western cultural values the underpinning factor. Even for the Africans this was a given, even though some of them still practiced African inspired religions and rites. Christianity was supreme. The new arrivals, however, who were to save the island's economy, were viewed as heathens. All of them - pagans. The Africans sought to put some distance between themselves and the newcomers, who were in turn not ... either.

My cousin Andrea de Boissière told me this story concerning the famous black solicitor and social agitator Mzumbo Lazare. Well-off, Lazare had an estate in Diego Martin. He never hired any Africans to work on his estate, only Indians. Unfortunately, he had a habit of referring to his Indian gardener as 'dog'. Well, one afternoon when Lazare's wife ... was entertaining the priests, the warden, his wife and other local gentry to tea and piano playing, the gardener appeared in their gorgeous midst. he called out to her:

"Hey Monkey! When Hog come, tell him Dog gone!"

In those days, government grants were made exclusively to Christian denominations. Muslim and Hindu marriages were not recognised as legal and were described as 'under the bamboo'. The end result was that a vast quantity, in fact the majority of Indians born here were technically illegitimate.

Visiting clergy tended to see Hinduism as unclean. John Morton, a Christian missionary and pioneer to the Indian community, thought it 'sinister', fostering a 'low sense of sin' (!). All this was voiced in the press and became common knowledge, and passed, as many a myth does, into history. However, Indian indentured labourers on the cane estates generally couldn't read English and didn't get the papers in those days, so all this was lost on them. They performed puja, maintained their devotions to the Gods they knew, loved and trusted, and in so doing, their lives continued to possess meaning.

Perhaps this was why they were able to resist conversion. A mere 11% of a population of over 100,000 Indians converted to Christianity by 1921. The newcomers to the segmented society did not share the host society's evaluation of their faith. There were conversions that were made so as to gain advancement in education, to grasp  lifestyle beneficial to economic growth.

Lionel Frank Seukaran, statesman, veteran politician, a man of the world, was born poor to Brahmin parent in Montserrat in the opening decades of the 20th century. Trained in the priestly traditions of his ancestors, Krishna, as his name was then, was very upwardly mobile. He made his way to San Fernando, shoes in hand, and only put them on upon arrival at the Canadian Mission Headquarters.

Accepted for schooling, he 'converted' to Christianity. After several months at school, a good friend, who had also converted, came to him one early morning.

"Krishna," he said, "I can't take this Christianity. I going home."

"O.k."

"But Krishna, Pa go kill me if I is a Christian when I go home."

Lionel thought about it for a moment, and then said:

"No problem. Meet me in the bicycle shed first thing tomorrow. Bring a coconut, some ghee, a white handkerchief, a little rice and some mango leaves."

The boy heaved a sigh of relief. Krishna, the Brahmin, always a Brahmin in spite of his own 'conversion' to Christianity, was going to turn him back into a Hindu...

Basically, for the Indians, the Hindus and the Muslims alike, "their religion provided a psychological protection, a sense of self-worth with which to arm themselves against the contempt of the society," comments Dr. Bridget Brereton. "The pundits and imams became influential leaders in their communities because they could offer this kind of psychological aid. In much the same way that creole society and the dominant English held Indian religion in contempt, this was also extended to Indian history, music, dress, cooking, taste and style. The island had been cast in the format of Europe and Africa. The slave societies of the Spanish, French and English had over the centuries syncretised itself through shared experience, history and custom into a Caribbean reality that did not include anyone east of Suez."

Over the decades, since the end of indentureship, Trinidadians of Indian descent have by and large become if not creolised, but certainly Trinidadianised. A parallel experience, sometime bridged through human encounters, creole Trinidad and Indian Trinidad possess much in common. It is history or perhaps the lack of knowledge of our historic process that make us appear so different and at times so intolerant.

"Ignorance of our history is the cause of all our misunderstandings and discords," wrote Trinidadian historian Pierre Gustave Louis Borde in 1876. "In breaking with the past, ignorance deprives us of the lessons of wisdom which are always drawn from earlier misfortunes. It is ignorance which breaks the links of fraternity which exist naturally between children of the same country. No matter what has been said, it is not by erasing history that we arrive a unity.”