Hundred Years of Ceylon Tea 1867 1967

A
HUNDRED
YEARS
OF
CEYLON
TEA
1867-1967
D. M. Forres
CHATTO
AND
WINDUS
MOST people will be surprised to hear that the great

Ceylon tea industry, now sharing the lead with India
among the world's exporters, is a mere hundred years
old. Less indeed, in a substantial sense, since it was
only in the 1880s that Ceylon tea really began to
storm the market.
Until then, coffee (some the finest ever grown) had
been the principal crop. Spasmodic experiments in
tea-planting had been going on since the midcentury, but it was in 1866 that a young Scotsman,
James Taylor, made his first clearing of 21 acres at
Loolecondera with the firm intention of growing and
selling tea commercially. He succeeded, and it was
lucky that he did so, because within two years the
Coffee Rust disease had begun its destructive course
which did not cease until coffee had been virtually
eliminated from Ceylon.
In this crisis, James Taylor's initiative, in growing
tea and in working out processes of manufacture, was
invaluable. The author has been fortunate in unearthing a marvellous cache of Taylor's letters to his
wheelwright father in Kincardineshireperhaps the
most complete record in existence of a young planter's
feelings and experiences. Much other unpublished
material has also been used in telling a story which
has its truly heroic side in the steadfastness with
which the planters, faced with utter ruin, uprooted
their treasured coffee and set to work to find an
alternative.
The author is master of this often highly entertaining early material. He also gives a lucid account
of the growth of an industry which owes its origins
mainly to British enterprise, but is now closely
identified with the people of independent Ceylon.
The forty illustrations, few of which, whether
ancient or modern, have ever before been published,
add to the text a pictorial history of Ceylon tea.
35s
net
A HUNDRED YEARS OF CEYLON TEA

1867-1967
Fertiliser for the tea-fieldsthe key to Ceylon's prosperity
A
HUNDRED YEARS OF
CEYLON TEA
1867-1967
By
D. M. FORREST
1967
CHATTO & WINDUS
LONDON
Published by
Chatto & Windus Ltd
42 William IV Street
London W.C.z
*
Clarke, Irwin & Co. Ltd
Toronto
D. M. Forrest 1967
Printed in Great Britain by
T. & A. Constable Ltd
Hopetoun Street
Edinburgh
CONTENTS
Illustrations
page vii
Preface
Note
xi
xiv
Chapter 1 Ceylon Tea in its Island Home
15
z The Plantation System is Born
z6
3 How Tea Came to Ceylon
44
4 The Loolecondera Story
57
8o
5 The Collapse of Coffee What next?

First Interlude The Men of '75
94
6 Tea Takes Over
97
7 The Hard Way in Field and Factory 115
8 Buyers and Sellers in Colombo I
129
9 Buyers and Sellers in Colombo II
148
io And So to Mincing Lane
16o
II The Planters Get Organised
176
Iz The Birth of Ceylon Tea Promotion
193
Second Interlude The Chasm: 1914-18 213

13 How the Slump was Met
216
14 Under Pressure in a Changing World 233

15 Rivals and Customers Today
248
16 At the Sign of the Lion
26i
Epilogue Old Acres, New Men 27/

Appendix
1 The Morice Report
v
275
CONTENTS
Appendix
II The Baring Correspondence
III The Grading of Ceylon Tea
IV Statistical Tables
V Estates Mentioned in the Text
281
z86
288
294
Bibliography
303
Index
309
vi
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
Fertiliser for Ceylon's tea-fields (Adolf Morath)
frontispiece
Plates appearing between pages 96 and 97

ra Peacock Hill Coffee Estate. Engraving after C. O'Brien, 1864
(Ceylon Tea Centre)
b Stripping cinchona trees
Log cabin life: A hunting day (Hamilton and Fasson, Scenes in
Ceylon)
3a Log cabin life: A working day (Hamilton and Fasson, Scenes in
Ceylon)
b The jungle-clearing era in Dimbula, c. 1865
4a James Taylor
b G. H. K. Thwaites (Gardener's Chronicle, 1874)
c H. Martin Leake (Ceylon Association)
5a James Taylor and Henry Stiven
b Moss Park, Taylor's birthplace
6 Field No. 7 Loolecondera, after pruning 1966 (Adolf Morath)
7a The nineteenth-century tea bush
b Contour planting, Hindagala Estate (Max Hemple)
8a 4V.P.' tea on St. Coombs Estate (Tea Research Institute)
b A typical estate in the '8os
9 Planting celebrities at Mattakelle (Mattakelle Estate)
ro Dhoby's house, Loolecondera. Taylor's first tea-house? (Adolf
Morath)
/la Weighing tea outside converted coffee 'store'
b Dambatenne factory (Max Hemple)
rz Tea-production scenes, Blackstone Estate, from the Graphic
1888 (National Museum, Colombo)
13a Primitive sorting (Benjamin Stone Collection, Birmingham
Public Library)
b Trough-withering, St. Joachim Estate (Adolf Morath)
vii
ILLUSTRATIONS
r4a Leaf brought down by wire shoot (Lipton Ltd.)
b Knapsack-type mechanical plucker (Tea Research Institute)
15 Elephant up-rooting old tea bushes, Harangalla Estate (Rosehaugh Co.)
16a Tea estate family (Max Hemple)
b Estate school playground (Max Hemple)
r7a Mother bush after pruning (Tea Research Institute)
b Seed-bearers at St. Coombs (Tea Research (Institute)
18 The `11.P.' process:
a Setting out leaf cuttings (Tea Research Institute)
b Hessian shade (Tea Research Institute)
c Fern Shade (Max Hemple)
d Covered Nursery, Sapulmakande (Tea Research Institute)
19a Injecting a leaf with radio-active carbon (Tea Research
Institute)
b Tea-tasters at work (Adolf Morath)
zo The Fort, Colombo:
a The lighthouse from Queen Street, r866 (R. G. Grove-White)
b The same view, 1966 (Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board)
2ra Bidding for 'Golden Tips'
b Modern auction, Colombo (Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board)
22a s.s. Duke of Argyll (National Maritime Museum)
b Embarking tea at Trincomalee (Adolf Morath)
23a Serving Ceylon tea, Paris (I.T.M.E.B.)
b Ceylon Tea Centre, Copenhagen
c Ceylon Tea Centre, Melbourne
24 H.M. The Queen visits an exhibition at London's Ceylon Tea
Centre, August 1962 (Ceylon Tea Centre)
Note.Plates rb and 3b are from albums of old Ceylon views owned
by the Ceylon Association, London; 4a, 5a and 5b from a Taylor
family album owned by Miss May Greig; 7a (left), 8b and i ra from an
album owned by Mr H. A. J. Hulugalle. Plate 7a (right) appeared
in several Ferguson publications from 1890 onwards.
viii
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURES IN THE TEXT
page
17
Figure
1 Ceylon (Randall Page Associates)
2 The pioneer belt
3 Coffee rust fungus (Gardener's Chronicle, 1869)
20
8z
4 Early auction catalogue Ceylon tea (Gow Wilson and

Stanton, Ltd.)
i68
5 First tea kiosk, Colombo Jetty (Ceylon Planters' Association)
204
FOLDING MAP
Tea planting districts in Ceylon
ix
facing page
320
To
CLARENCE COOREY GERVAS HUXLEY
KENNETH MORFORD
`Happy my labours when by these approved.'
it
PREFACE
HIS book was commissioned by the Ceylon Tea Propaganda
Board to mark the centenary of the first commercial planting of
tea in Ceylon on Loolecondera Estate, Hewaheta, in the year
1867.
It was written mainly during the winter of 1965-6, and though it
has been possible to make a few later amendments and additions, the
statistical information does not as a rule extend beyond the calendar
year 1965.
Remarkably enough, this is the first time that a general history of
the Ceylon Tea Industry has been attempted, and I am conscious of
its many inadequacies; however, I hope it may lead to more widespread interest in the subject and perhaps to other writers dealing in
greater detail with particular sections of this very wide field.
Primary sources have not proved as rich as I had hoped, and one
must specially deplore the loss of many business records both in
Ceylon and overseas. It is fortunate that at least we have the Proceedings and Correspondence of the Planters' Association of Ceylon
covering the whole period, and of these (as well as of the Association's
own centenary volume) I have made full use.
I have also had the benefit of one outstanding trouvaille the
correspondence of James Taylor of Loolecondera. This was brought
to my attention by his great-niece, Miss May Greig, of Dundee, who
as a result of a newspaper paragraph about the centenary, wrote to say
that she had a box filled with letters, legal documents and Press
cuttings, preserved by the family for many years. This turned out to
be material of the richest kind, only a tithe of which can find a place
in this book. But it also became quickly apparent that there was a gap
in the correspondence at its most critical point; the letters run from
April 1851, when young James set off for his Eastern adventure, up
to September 186o, and they do not resume until February 1869,
after which the series is fairly continuous until Taylor's death in 1892.
In other words, the crucial years during which he was pioneering in
tea and cinchona are not represented. What has happened to the
missing letters (which might have set much of our centenary story in a
different light) I do not know; one reasonable guess is that they were
`borrowed' in the very early days by one or other member of the
Ferguson family when compiling their biographies of the planting
xi
PREFACE
pioneers; indeed, John Ferguson quotes at least one phrase from a
Taylor letter which is not in the correspondence as we have it.
Secondary authorities are dealt with in the Bibliography at the end
of this book, but one deserves particular mention Mr W. H. Ukers'
All About Tea. Though I have been more or less familiar with that
extraordinary encyclopaedia for the past twenty years, it was not until
I embarked upon the present work that I realised its full scope and,
on the whole, outstanding accuracy. This, and the multitudinous
Ferguson publications (to which further reference is made in Chapter
12), have saved me an untold amount of spadework.
My great help, however, has been from people, not books. To thank
everyone who assisted in the bringing of this history to birth would
mean a list of hundreds of names, and so far as the members of the
Colombo and London tea trades are concerned, I hope they will
collectively accept my thanks for countless kindnesses received;
almost every firm mentioned in Chapters 8, 9 and 1o, for example, was
consulted, and gave information to the best of its ability.
From the planters, Ceylonese and British alike, I received a
traditional welcome, and if I only mention the help and hospitality
of a handful Mr and Mrs W. J. Childerstone (Balangoda Group),
Mr C. S. Edwards (Cannavarella Group), Mr and Mrs S. M. A.
Jayawardene (Dambatenne) and Mr and Mrs F. G. Peterson (Coombewood) the many others with whom I spent a briefer time will know
that they are not forgotten. But a special word must be said about
Mr and Mrs Roy Cameron, the present 'incumbents' at Loolecondera,
who threw themselves into the affair (Mr Cameron, among other
things, undertook the 'grind' of transcribing many of James Taylor's
crabbed and faded early letters) and showed me the whole terrain in
the course of two visits: my thanks, too, to the proprietors of the estate,
Messrs Anglo-Ceylon & General Estates, whose guest I was there,
and to Mr R. H. Cotton, of their Colombo agents, Messrs Bois Bros.
& Co.
Various organisations and their officials were equally helpful: the
Planters' Association of Ceylon, whose secretary (Mr A. M. S.
Perera) and Assistant Secretary (Mr A. B. M. van Reyk) gave me 'the
freedom of the house' all the time I was in Colombo and have answered
a host of questions since; the Tea Research Institute of Ceylon, whose
present Director, Dr E. M. Chenery, and Mrs Chenery, together with
the whole staff, made me feel more at home than ever at T.R.I.; the
Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (Secretary, Mr C. Dias) and the
Ceylon Association in London, where the Secretary (Mr Neil de
xii
PREFACE
Saram) and Assistant Secretary (Mr R. J. Barber) bore my constant
incursions with wonderful patience.
I made much use of the Association's excellent library as of many
others among them the National Museum Library, Colombo (where
Mr Lyn de Fonseka made me welcome), the Royal Botanic Gardens,
Peradeniya (Mr D. M. A. Jayaweera), Associated Newspapers of
Ceylon (with files going back to the pioneer period) and, in Britain,
the Royal Commonwealth Society, the Linnean Society, the British
Museum (Newspaper Section), Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew), the
London Library, Birmingham and Aberdeen Public Libraries and
the Ceylon Tea Centre. Messrs. Baring Bros. & Co. allowed me to
explore their archives, with Mr T. L. Ingram as my friendly guide,
and from Dr R. G. Grove-White I received the papers of his grandfather, Andrew Hunter, Secretary of St Andrew's Club, Nuwara
Eliya, in the 1860s.
A debt of a different sort is owed to all those who gave time and
trouble to reading various portions of the MS., either officially on
behalf of the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board or as an act of kindness
to the author. In Ceylon they included Dr Chenery, Messrs J. L.
Capper, C. P. Chanmugam (Tea Controller), W. J. Childerstone,
M. A. Ellepola, John Grigson, M.B.E., H. A. J. Hulugalle, Elmar
Martenstyn, Victor Ratnayake, M.B.E., R. Singleton-Salmon, C.B.E.,
and M. E. Wijesinghe; in England, Messrs Gervas Huxley, C.M.G.,
A. G. Mathewson, O.B.E., Kenneth Morford, C.B.E. (who indefatigably tackled the whole manuscript, as did Messrs Hulugalle and
Martenstyn) and Charles Strachan.
My last but most heartfelt thanks go to my colleagues past and
present to Mr M. A. Bartlett (Chairman) and Mr C. 0. Coorey,
M.B.E. (Director and Secretary, 1948 to 1966), Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board; Mr A. D. Macleod (Chairman) and Mr Ernest Jesudason (Organising Director), International Tea Market Expansion
Board; and Mr A. H. Chambers, my successor as Commissioner of
the Ceylon Tea Centre, London; and all their staffs. The three old
friends whose names appear on my dedication page can perhaps stand
for those three organisations as well; the services of Mr Coorey and
Mr Huxley are described in the text, and Mr Morford, besides
being a past Chairman of the Planters' Association and a present
Director of the International Tea Market Expansion Board, has given
a lifetime to Ceylon and its people, no less than to individuals (like
myself) who have been drawn into Ceylon's service.
D. M. F.
June 1966
NOTE
N inevitable difficulty has been encountered over the spelling
of Ceylonese proper names. The English transliteration of
these is even now somewhat fluid, and in the past was chaotic.
Just one example: For spellings of Loolecondera I have made the
following (no doubt incomplete) anthology Lool Condura, Loole
Condura, Loole Condera, Loolkandura, Lulkandura, Lollecondura,
Loolcondura and Loolecondura, to say nothing of far-out versions
like Yoolcondera and Golconda!
Except where adherence to an old-fashioned form has some significance, therefore, the rule has been to follow the spelling in the 1965
edition of the Ceylon Directory. Note also that the modern custom has
been adopted of using the word 'Ceylonese' for all the inhabitants
of Ceylon; 'Sinhalese' to indicate members of that race. A few words
now out of favour like 'coolie' (for worker or labourer) have been
retained in their historical context.
Money values have been given in rupees or sterling, according to
the source being used. When the Indian rupee was adopted as
standard currency in Ceylon in 1872, its par value was 2s. od. sterling;
its actual value fluctuated considerably during the next z6 years, being
sometimes as low as is. od., but in 1899 the rate of exchange was
fixed at is. 4d. and this was maintained until after World War II. An
attempt was then made (1919) to raise the value to 2S. od., but it soon
reverted to Is. 4d. From 1927 to June 1966 the value of the Indian
and Ceylon rupees was is. 6d. The Indian rupee was then devalued
by 361 per cent, but the Ceylon rupee did not follow suit.
The Ceylon rupee is divided into loo cents. For converting larger
amounts it can be taken (in modern terms) that Rs. 1,000= 75;
Lr,000 = Rs. 13,35o.
xiv
11/
Chapter i
CEYLON TEA IN ITS ISLAND HOME

'You will think I write a lot about the scenery, but if you saw it you
would not think I said too much.'
JAMES TAYLOR- 1858
at it on the map, the first thing likely to strike you

about Ceylon is its compactness. The pear-shaped outline is
symmetrical and smooth, only frayed here and there by narrow
coastal lagoons, by a jagged tear where the stalk would seem to have
been torn away from India and, on the east coast, by the brief but bold
indentation of Trincomalee Bay. The length from north to south is
only 270 miles; the greatest width 14o miles. On every side the Indian
Ocean comes washing in, usually to a beach of glittering sand backed
by one of those palm-tree groves which provide the photographer
with a ready-made accent, and the people of the country with so many
of the necessities and some few luxuries of life.
Nor does a relief model dispel this trim impression. Ceylon's
mountain system is neither a spine nor a sprawl, but a tight bunch of
crumpled contours in the exact centre of the widest part of the island.
The western and the eastern foothills each begin to rise about 3o
miles from the coast, and a line drawn straight across the country
from the capital Colombo to the opposite shore passes equidistantly
between the two best known peaks Pidurutalagala or Pedro (8,292
ft) and Adams Peak (7,360 ft). Seldom in the whole hill country are
you quite out of sight of the sea.
Yet in many ways the island's profile is misleading. Behind it are
contrasts and diversities so great as to leave one pondering on just
what Ceylon is besides a shape on the map a shape incidentally
which has led to the island being called the Pearl of the East, but
which equally resembles a bulging bag into which every kind of
incompatible element has been crammed.
To begin with, small though it is, and situated in a tropical latitude
of unending summer, Ceylon has two distinct categories of climate,
which partly overlap. One depends on rainfall, the other on elevation.
The former is activated by the rain-winds or 'monsoons'. Roughly
from May to September the famous south-west sweeps in from the
OOKING
I5

Indian Ocean rendering most of the harbours (in their natural state)
unusable, drenching and nourishing the green coastal plains and,
when it hits the central hills, discharging so much of its moisture
that there is little left for the jungle lands beyond. Thus are created
the Wet and Dry Zones which cut across so many of the natural
divisions of the country. Not that the Dry Zone is unvisited by. rain this is largely supplied by the other monsoon, the north-east, arriving
from the direction of the Bay of Bengal between October and January
but as it is briefer and less copious, its waters need to be conserved
if they are to see the Zone through its long months of drought. For
this reason Ceylon still exhibits the remains of one of the most
stupendous irrigation systems ever conceived by man.
All over the eastern provinces can be traced thousands of 'tanks' (as
the reservoirs are called) and the 'bunds' (embankments) which
retained them. The largest of the former contains 6,000 acres of water;
the longest of the latter is nine miles from end to end. These huge
works, conceived by the Sinhalese kings over a period of 2,000 years
from the sixth century B.C. onwards, have been gradually restored in
order to bring the Dry Zone back into cultivation. This is essential so
long as the population of Ceylon continues to rise at its present rate,
though it is possible to regret the loss of so much magnificent jungle
and of the wild life which it harbours.
The north-east monsoon, like the south-west, meets its quietus in
the central hills, with the startling result that you can step from one
climate into the other by walking a mile or two up a slope, over a
ridge and down the other side. We shall see how closely relevant this
monsoon system is to our story.
The climatic differences caused by height are no less potent.
Among tea men the three elevational zones shown in the pull-out map
(end of book) are recognised `Low-grown' (sea-level up to 2,000 ft),
'Mid-grown' (2,000 ft to 4,000 ft) and 'High-grown' (over 4,000 ft) but the broad contrast is between the Low-country and the Hills.
The former experiences hardly any of the seasonal changes known to
the temperate world. Colombo is always hot and humid; it gets hotter
just before the monsoon and much wetter during it that is all. The
same clothes can be worn, the same outdoor games played, all the
year round. Within a few hours' drive, however, you are in surroundings where winter and summer are at least detectable and where the
former may bring frost and even ice though no authenticated snow.
It should be easy to predict from all this what the occupations of
lowlanders and highlanders in a mainly peasant community would
CEYLON
Anuradhapura
s.
zx
NitaImm
Folesnannva7: '''''''
-C7 -
61107ja
R
CONN
=
tt,
.Hanaaelde
FIGURE I.
Ceylon

be agricultural for the first, pastoral and woodland for the second.
As you leave Colombo by road (though at least one trip by the superb
railway route to Kandy is a 'must') it seems that this is how it is going
to be. Thickly inhabited (and, of course, becoming more so every
year), such Low-country districts as Kalutara, Negombo and the
Kelani Valley show an intensity of ribbon development hardly to be
matched even in industrial Europe it is the literal truth that nowhere
along any main road in lowland Ceylon are you out of sight of houses
and people. However charming both are, this would be almost
oppressive were it not that everything houses, people, animals,
temples, garages, cowsheds and electricity sub-stations is muffled
and drowned in the tremendous vegetation which even shuts out the
sky except where it is interrupted by dazzling green stretches of
paddy field. Then as you approach the hills, their splendid contours
suggest that at any moment the steep pastures and axe-resounding
woods of a sub-tropical Switzerland will take over. Instead, what you
see is TEA.
Readers of this book who may be vague as to what a tea estate looks
like have only to turn to the illustrations. But these convey a localised,
not the over-all effect, which is as though some celestial fountain-pen
had discharged a huge blob of green ink, just above the centre of
Ceylon's hill country (Figure I). As might be expected from this metaphor, the heart of the blob is dense and almost unbroken, then it begins
to thin out until finally there are only a few flecks and sprinkles
scattered about on the perimeter. You do not need a helicopter to
get a grasp of this. There are viewpoints innumerable and splendid.
Eighteen miles south-east of Kandy lies James Taylor's pioneer
tea estate of Loolecondera, of which so much more will be heard in
this book. Climb to the top of the vast convoluted hillside along which
it sprawls and you come to a little pass. It is known as the Stellenburg
Gap, and through it Taylor must often have walked or ridden en route
for the estate of that name which was also part of his 'parish' (Figure
a). Though in terms of the tea country you are well north of centre,
you feel it is all pivoted round the spot where you are standing. In
front, across the heart of the 'blob' (the almost unbroken teascape of
Dimbula and Dickoya) Adam's Peak notches the skyline; on your
left-hand the complex hills of Ramboda and Nuwara Eliya, hardly
less dense in tea, lead you towards the eastern concentrations of
Badulla and Passara the Uva country and the ultimate ridge of
Madulsima before the jungles begin; at your back is the valley of
Ceylon's greatest river, the Mahaweliganga, watering the once famous
18

estates about Gampola and Kandy itself, and beyond it the northerly
outposts of 'High-grown' tea Hunasgiriya, Kelebokka, and the
Knuckles Range, which close the horizon. Only hidden, except as a
misty glimpse here and there, is what we may call the zone of 'sprinkle'
the hundreds of 'Mid-grown' and 'Low-grown' estates dotted
about among the rubber and coconuts in an arc stretching from
Matale, through Kegalla and the Kelani Valley to the outskirts of
Colombo, then south-west past Ratnapura towards the splendid
foothills of Balangoda, Rakwana and Morawak Korale, till they die
away almost on the seashore at Galle (see pull-out map).
Contrast, then, between Wet Zone and Dry Zone, the Lowcountry and the Hills, also between the 'blob' and the 'sprinkle'. But
the greatest contrast of all is in close-up between any tea and any
non-tea landscape. The mountains may be steep and jagged, the
plains luxuriant and steamy, but wherever tea is grown, at whatever
elevation, there is one prevailing note order. What the plantation
pioneers evolved in the first place, and what their successors have
maintained in the face of all tropical inducements to ease off, is a selfdisciplined routine aimed at the production of as much and as good tea as
possible from a given acreage of land. Everything speaks of it, from the
moment when you spy at the roadside a neatly lettered sign:
ESTATE
TO FACTORY AND BUNGALOW
until the final phase of your visit when specimens of the various
grades produced are laid out for you to taste. You are absorbed into
an unchanging time-table, a world complete in itself, a social mechanism fitted exactly to its sole function.
What is strange in that? The question might be asked by anyone
familiar with plantation agriculture elsewhere in the world. The
uniqueness of the Ceylon tea industry lies in its immense importance
to, yet distinctness from, the everyday life of the little island which
folds it in on every side. It is a commonplace to say that tea is the lifeblood of Ceylon; it provides two-thirds of the country's export
revenue, while the wages it pays, its countless minor offshoots and
the services which feed it, represent a further massive slice of her
internally circulating wealth. Moreover, Ceylon is the only country
in the world whose economic existence actually depends on this
particular crop; even her greatest rival India could survive without
tea at a price.
19

Yet it is curiously easy for the casual visitor to spend several weeks
travelling about the island without being conscious of what its staple
product is! A tea estate or two may be pointed out on his way up. to
Kandy, the ancient capital (he will see a great many more if he
penetrates as far as Nuwara Eliya), but it happens that the usual
attractions the bathing beaches and the marvellous ruined cities tend to keep him circling round the tea country rather than plunging
into it. Even Colombo itself may reveal no more to his casual gaze
than a wagon or two loaded with chests for the local dealers, or the
glimpse of one of the few internationally familiar names Lipton or
Brooke Bond perhaps on a building or a van. Here again it is sheer

Miles
0
Sinnapitiya
NILAMBE
Hang ranketa
Gampola
Le VaIlon
11"
PUS'SELLAWA
Maria watt;
"Looleconderc
Stellen burg
Hope
Black Forest
Glenloch
Peacock Nil I,
.Rook wood
'Mooloya
Rothschild
FIGURE
HEWAHETA
2. The Pioneer Belt Loolecondera and other

early estates south of Kandy
chance that, as the estates are hidden in the hills, so the traders of
Colombo operate the world's greatest tea export business under
names (with those few exceptions) unknown to the general public; they
are located moreover either in reticent brass-plated offices engulfed
by the seething Eastern life which has now taken over the Tort' area
of the city, or in sedate warehouses tucked away by Beira Lake, where
they load their lighters for dispatch to the harbour and the ships.
It must be added that it is not only to the tourist that the industry
plays this curious role of 'invisible giant' it has something of that
character for the Ceylonese themselves. Historically, as we shall see,
the plantation enterprise (first coffee, then the tea which supplanted
it) drew its capital and management from Britain and its labour from
South India. It was in the country but not of it, though it is untrue
20

that the local inhabitants were ever wholly excluded either by chance
or intention, or at any level. For one thing, there have always been
scores, if not hundreds, of Ceylonese-owned estates. In the years
following World War II it looked as though their number might
increase very rapidly. 'Take-over bids' became the fashion in the
early 195os, and it was only the country's foreign exchange famine
and the consequent ban on the export of capital which has slowed the
process down.
Today the ownership of Ceylon's 600,000 acres of tea land is
divided on a more or less tripartite basis between sterling companies i.e. those registered in London and with predominantly British
capital (32 per cent); rupee companies i.e. those registered in
Ceylon and with mixed British and Ceylonese capital (26 per cent);
and in individual Ceylonese ownership (22 per cent); the remainder
being mostly smallholdings. However, the sterling companies do
control a large proportion of Ceylon's 330 top-size estates (5oo acres
or over), more particularly those producing the High-grown tea
which commands the best prices in the world's markets.
On the management side, change has been much more rapid.
European Superintendents are a fast dwindling race today (about 150
at the time of going to Press); European Assistants are virtually
extinct and, since the Government ban on bringing any more in is
unlikely to be modified, it seems that the 'British planter', once so
prominent in the landscape of Ceylon, will soon vanish from it.
As regards labour, this is still provided mainly by the descendants
of the South Indian Tamils who were first introduced in the 182os,
but, again, from the start there have been thousands of local Sinhalese
workers, particularly in the Low-country.' Their numbers are bound
to rise if the present plan (inspired by Ceylon's population increase
and consequent unemployment) to repatriate a proportion of the
Tamils is carried through.
Finally, in the export section of the industry the picture is not very
different; a lot of Ceylonese capital is employed there, though so far
only one major Agency House has passed wholly into local control,
and it is still possible to bring in replacements for the handful of
European top management remaining. Heads of departments and
subordinate staff are virtually all Ceylonese and have been for years.
One hopes that, as a result of all this, there may be a more widely
A. M. Ferguson talked of the Low-country Sinhalese 'taking kindly' to plucking, and estimated their numbers at over to,000 in the early 188os. And even up in
Nuwara Eliya the local Planters' Association was making regular recommendations
about plucking pay for Sinhalese from about 1893.
21

diffused feeling that the tea industry and its extraordinary achievements are part of the national heritage of Ceylon. There will never
be a return to the exuberant days when the 'planting interest' could
batter away at a parsimonious Government till just for the sake of
peace and quiet, one feels it provided the roads and railways which
were then the clue to Ceylon's prosperity, and when the local Pfess
(today almost devoid of tea news) bulged with the industry's triumphs
and disasters, with gossip and rumour from the tea country and with
column upon column of Planters' Association reports! But at least
there should be less of that critical and even mistrustful feeling which
has provided a sort of undercurrent to the whole story and which will
be frankly faced in the present book.
Meanwhile, in their quiet, rather anonymous way, the tea-growing
companies soldier on, wincing under ever-heavier taxation but never
quite succumbing to it; trying to improve their properties whenever
finance permits; keeping the tea in good heart, and in fact producing,
in a manner which borders on the miraculous, larger and larger
yields from bushes which for the most part are between so and ioo
years old. They are even pressing forward (rather belatedly, compared with India, for example) with a long-term programme of
replanting. This, being based on a system of Vegetative Propagation
from selected bushes, seems certain to send yields shooting up still
further and eventually to change the face of the tea estates and of
Ceylon itself in ways hardly imagined today.
So to the contrasts already noted in this chapter can be added that
between the difficulties surrounding the industry and the bustling
energy with which it still gets on with the job. As the road to the tea
country mounts, morale seems to rise with it! On the estates, instead
of the atmosphere of 'ticking over' which one might expect, there is
pride of accomplishment, planning for the future, impatience at the
restraints (mainly financial) imposed by Government action or boardroom caution in Colombo or Mincing Lane.
Ìf you come to my place', runs the inevitable invitation, 'I'll show
you the finest VP tea . . . or the best clonal nurseries . . . or the most
modern factory . . . or the most up-to-date workers' housing . . . in
the whole island!' And, of course, this goes for the Ceylonese planters
as much as for the European remnant.
Such sustained lan is partly due to the fact that in spite of Government control, the increasing power of trade unions, and the incursions
of the Visiting Agent (see page 131), the individual estate is still
something of a little kingdom on its own, over which the super22

intendent reigns and rules. And not so little either, come to that. A
process of amalgamation which, at its most drastic, has substituted
`groups' of as much as 3,000 acres for a former mosaic of small
estates, has increased the responsibilities and to some degree the
isolation of the individual `P.D.'.1 His neighbours are fewer and
further away. For example, the number of separate units in the
Nuwara Eliya planting district has been reduced from over a score
originally to only seven; one of these (Pedro) has absorbed such oncefamous estates as Lover's Leap, Mahagastotte, Naseby, Fairyland,
Moon Plains and Elephant Nook; while Portswood and Court Lodge
have vanished into the 1,596 acres of Park Group.
This means that on the largest groups one man may be personally
responsible for the growing and processing of up to 3 million lb. of
tea a year enough to keep one of the smaller European countries
supplied. To describe in detail the procedure by which this is done is
not a function of the present book all that is available in such
publications as How Ceylon Tea is Grown and Marketed.2 I will
simply say that in the particular case of Ceylon the fact that (thanks
to the climate) there is no seasonal loss of rhythm, intensifies the feeling of endless continuity in contrast for example with North India,
where the 'cold weather' suspends plucking from November to
January, with a corresponding rush period to follow.
Day after day, year after year, the routine of a Ceylon estate goes
on. It goes on, too, right round the clock, since the factory works all
night on the withering, rolling, fermenting, drying and grading of
the leaf which has been coming in throughout the previous day a
cycle of almost exactly 24 hours from bush to chest or storage bin.
Weather conditions rain or shine obviously affect the quality and
quantity of leaf, but only the heaviest rain at muster time (usually
7 o'clock nowadays) deters the sturdy pluckers from turning out with
sacking aprons round their waists and cumblies (blankets) over their
heads. Travellers, by the way, who have only seen them in their foulweather garb or among the chillier heights of the Up-country, are
inclined to dismiss as 'phoney' any coloured photograph or film
which shows them in bright saris, set off by golden neck, arm, ear and
nose ornaments. But the gayer and the more sombre picture are
equally authentic it is just a matter of weather!
Women pluckers . . . bright saris . . . dark cumblies . . . such are the
I The expression 'P.D.' (peria dorai 'big master') is much used for Superintendent; 'S.D.' (sinna dorai 'small master') for Assistant.
London, Ceylon Tea Centre, rev. ed. 1966.
23

familiar ingredients of the plucking scene. But, as will be found over
and over again in the following pages, it is extremely dangerous to
generalise about any aspect of the Ceylon tea industry. Actually,
there are today plenty of estates where men and boys provide a
substantial element in the plucking strength, just as there are others
with almost as many Sinhalese as Tamils. There are interacting
reasons for this. On the one hand, economies are always being tried in
the jobs which traditionally belong to the men pruning at longer
intervals, the reduction or removal of shade trees which need to be
lopped and tended, the virtual abolition of 'forking', or deep cultivation between rows. On the other hand, there are ever greater
quantities of leaf to be plucked.
How many questions spring to life, when old familiar ground is
disturbed. To chase just this one hare is irresistible! For instance, are
male pluckers as good as female? And how did women get into the act
in the first place? First answer: If they start young enough and stick to
the job, instead of ducking out on grounds of male prestige, the boys
and men do just as well as their 'deft-fingered' womenfolk. Second
answer: A much more complex one and of curious historical interest.
In most of the old coffee-planting literature books, letters, diaries there is no mention of female workers at all. James Taylor and his
contemporaries are always writing about 'my coolies', but the women
just appear as wives! Nor, when the switch was made to tea, does there
seem to have been any deliberate sex-change in the harvest fields.
However, it was soon found that a lot more manpower was needed
for a given acreage of tea than for coffee, except during the latter's
brief 'crop' season (when all hands got busy) and, of course, in the
case of Ceylon tea it is 'crop' the whole year round! As recruitment
was always difficult, the labour force came to comprise the entire
able-bodied population of the estates and there arose a functional
division of tasks between cultivation for men and plucking for
women.1 Today quite a number of estates are back at the transitional
stage shown in Plate 8b, when men and women plucked side by side
as a matter of course.
The story of the Ceylon plantation enterprise, with tea as its latest
phase, is in fact one of stubborn continuity, wrenched by violent or
remoulded by subtle change. Its short course is congested with people
and events, many of them considerably larger than life! They will
1 One of the few pioneers who foresaw that there would be work for both sexes
was Arthur Morice, author of the Morice Report (Appendix I), but oddly enough he
reversed their eventual roles.
24

congest this book, too. So it is just as well to make one final pause on
the heights whether above Loolecondera or on some other eagle's
ledge between Corbett's Gap and World's End. Though I have talked
of the 'blob' and the 'sprinkle', the endless miles of tea, seen from
above, are curiously unobtrusive, even where the estates lie so close
that there is scarcely a crack for a hamlet or a copse between them.
The noble structure of the land the humped hills, the ridges and
the crags asserts itself, and dominating everything is the magnificent sky. Ceylon lives under a perpetual blessing of sun and rain.
Because it is small, and an island, and visited by two monsoons, it is
the playground of every weather. There are places and times, indeed,
which mock my word 'blessing' places where the chilly mist comes
down for days on end, times when the south-west blasts so hard that
men are 'blown off the cart-road into the tea'. That is the elemental
Ceylon.
It is only when one gets down to eye-level, so to speak, that one
realises the truly extraordinary thing which the human will has
imposed upon this great landscape the fanatical thoroughness in
fact with which the pioneers subdued and planted it. Tea grows now
(and coffee grew before) on slopes as inhospitable as Iceland's, on
precipices where you would hardly expect a human being to stand
upright, let alone to plant and prune and manure tea bushes, and
pluck them every few days for 75 years or more! Those engaged on
the job take it all for granted, and indeed think nothing of planting
afresh where their predecessors seem crazy to have planted at all.
To me it is not more wonderful that men are on the verge of flying
to the moon.
25
Chapter
THE PLANTATION SYSTEM IS BORN'The rise and progress of coffee planting in Ceylon is, undoubtedly,
the most remarkable phenomenon that the island has ever seen
since the days when, according to Singhalese tradition, the yakhos
were compelled to make way for the human race.'
'CEYLON MISCELLANY' - 1866
N our ever-flexible English language, the word 'plantation' was

originally applied to people, not to plants. When James I promoted
the plantation of Ulster, or John Donne, preaching to the Virginia
Company, referred to 'our plantations in America', it was human
colonists rather than flax or tobacco they had in mind: nevertheless,
the end-products were, and were intended to be, plantations in the
modern sense. Trade did not merely follow the flag; it was the motive
for the flag being there.
In the East the course of events was somewhat different. There are
many reasons why no European Power ever tried seriously to 'plant'
or colonise the countries of Asia distance, climate and above all, of
course, the fact that there were already existing in these lands, deepbased civilisations and elaborate patterns of urban and rural life.
Expansion eastwards, where it was not purely strategic, was set in
motion by the lure of those immemorial local exports 'ivory, apes
ar 4 peacocks . . . spices and very much gold, and precious stones'.
Those who have hopefully identified Ceylon not only with enigmatic
Ophir but even with the homeland of the Queen of Sheba, can at any
rate claim that all the above products (except the gold) could appear
on a Bill of Lading f.o.b. Colombo in 1967.
To no one more than to the Dutch did the concept of Asia as a
source of solid, convertible wealth appeal. The ivory, the apes .. . yes,
but above all the spices unassuageably demanded by the Western
world in the days before refrigeration. Ceylon passed from Portuguese
to Dutch control in 1656. But, even so, it is something of a surprise,
when we ring up the curtain on her as a plantation country in the late
eighteenth century, to find her in the dizzy position of producing the
world's entire supply of cinnamon.
The story is worth a page or two of this Tea book and not just
z6
THE PLANTATION SYSTEM IS BORN

because a cup of Ceylon tea which has been gently stirred with a
cinnamon stick makes such a pleasant drink for a winter's day! It is in
fact a cautionary tale, carrying plenty of sharp (and sometimes
contradictory) morals.
Up to 1769, the Dutch were dependent on cinnamon growing wild
in the jungle, much of it within the territories of the independent
King of Kandy. The latter from time to time asserted his right to turn
the cinnamon peelers out, and in the year referred to Governor
Franck decided to set up a regular plantation at Maradana, Colombo
(the residential area of Cinnamon Gardens marks the site), and also
to encourage the Sinhalese to form 'an infinity of small gardens'.
But export remained the most rigid monopoly imaginable the
smallest infringement of it could incur punishment by death! Moreover (and this is something which no other primary producer except
perhaps De Beers in the nineteenth century has been able to do), the
Dutch managed to stabilise world consumption as well and to keep it
at about the same figure (4.00,000 lb.) for just over a century from
1691 until the last shipment before the British occupation of Ceylon
in 1796.
Even then the pattern continued for a time. The East India
Company simply took over the monopoly, and when the island was
transferred to the Crown in 1798 the Company paid the Government
6o,000 a year, being the value of that same magical quantity, 4.00,000
lb., which mankind was apparently destined to consume for as long
as the world should endure. However, the Dutch flair was missing.
Governor North (1798-1805) decided to abolish the small-scale
growing of cinnamon so as to free the land for other crops and also to
relieve neighbouring farmers of restrictions which were thought
necessary near cinnamon gardens. But the result was a decline of
production in the official plantations owing to over-stripping of the
bark, and large quantities had to be scraped together from the Kandyan
jungles and the abandoned groves of the Sinhalese.
Things looked bad, and the Government (as Governments will)
thought it could improve matters by taking over the monopoly itself.
Henceforth there were to be three grades of cinnamon; it was to be
packed in uniform loo-lb. bales, and to be sold only at public auction
in Colombo. This did not work the auctions of cinnamon were
closed down in 1826, and why? Because the merchants 'made a tacit
agreement to bid it in at much less than the reserve price'. Attempts
to make Colombo the centre of the trade were abandoned and all
cinnamon was sent to London for sale. This phase ended with the
27

Government's monopoly being abolished (1833), and its huge stocks,
hoarded to maintain the price, eventually disposed of.
So far the storyl is strawberries and cream to anyone today whose
doctrine is 'Free trade in tea and Governments keep out!' The sequel
is even more poignant, though in some respects equivocal.
Ceylon's world monopoly had ceased to exist well before the end
of its Government's internal monopoly; or rather it had become
specialised and precarious, being confined to the finer, more delicate
grades. There was now increasing competition from inferior but
much cheaper kinds and especially from substitutes such as the cassia
grown in South India, the Philippines, and South China. Anyone in
Ceylon was now free to cut and ship, but to make up for its loss of
revenue the Government insisted on an export duty of 3s. od. to
bring in an equivalent amount. This at a time when the Java duty was
id. per lb. on a much cheaper product a truly British idea to give
what was in effect a protective tariff to our rivals!
Pressure was constantly brought to get the duty reduced, and with
infinite reluctance, always too little and always too late, the Treasury
yielded down went the duty until, after stern words from the
Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, it reached nil in 1853. Meanwhile,
the London price of Grade I Cinnamon dwindled away from 9s. 9d.
in 1835 to is. 3d. in 1855, while its contemptible rival cassia fluctuated gently between 6d. and one shilling. . . .
The European planters sold out, but strangely enough the trade
was saved for Ceylon, in a way, by the local growers (on the 'If you
can't beat 'em, join 'em' principle), going over to production of
inferior sorts and building up an enormous export business; this
included the 'chips' which up till then had only been used for producing oil. By 1867 a peak figure of no less than 2,684,367 lb. valued at
134,269, had been reached and even today cinnamon forms a minor
but acceptable element in Ceylon's export returns.
The thoughtful reader will brood a moment over all this, and pass
on.
The next step was coffee. Economically and socially, this was in
strong contrast to its predecessor. As we have seen, cinnamon was
nurtured as a Government monopoly, whereas coffee (like its successor, tea) was the tie plus ultra of private enterprise; cinnamon was
derived only from the wild forest and a few plantations near Colombo
coffee soon came to depend on a large-scale jungle-clearing opera1 Well summarised in Lennox A. Mills, Ceylon Under British Rule, 1793-1862
(reissued London, Frank Cass, 1964).
28

tion; cinnamon was sustained by official and local capital coffee was
predominantly London-financed; cinnamon-gathering was a traditional and indeed caste occupation of the Sinhalese coffee drew
its labour from overseas, with momentous results; cinnamon wilted
and almost died under the stress of foreign competition coffee fell
a victim to physical disease in the moment of its greatest prosperity;
and finally, cinnamon's story is linked with tea only by the fiscal
lessons to be drawn from it, whereas the tea estates of today are, in
fact, the coffee estates of roo years ago, redeployed, extended and
growing a different crop.
Historically, however, there was an overlap between cinnamon and
coffee. Most of the early writers repeat the story that the latter was
introduced into Ceylon by Arab traders even before the coming of
the Portuguese (15o5), and it is certain that during the Dutch and
early British occupation it was widely grown as a peasant crop and
sold to Muslim traders in Galle and Colombo. Hull, however, adds
the interesting detail:
`The natives of Ceylon seem, in the first instance, to have cultivated
the plant mainly, if not solely, with the view of obtaining its fragrant
white blossoms for the decoration of the temple shrines; hence it was
first found largely growing at Hangurankette, some sixteen miles from
Kandy, where there were at one time an important Buddhist establishment and a royal palace.'1
The writer alleges that from this centre the trees had been freely
propagated over the adjacent mountain slopes and that, when the
commercial value of coffee became known, 'the entire tract producing
the previous plant was bought by a wealthy and intelligent native
from the Government at the then upset price of five shillings an acre'
and, of course, realised a fortune. All this has an air of legend, but
in fact Hangurankette (the modern Hanguranketa Group) was once
a royal domain and is still in the hands of the Ceylonese family, the
de Soysas, who acquired it 15o years ago.
Whatever may be the truth about coffee's status as a rival of the
popular 'temple flower' (frangipani), its debut as a plantation crop is
well documented. The period, 1823-5; the location, the Kandy and
Gampola districts; the moving spirits, none other than the Governor,
Sir Edward Barnes and the Military Commandant of the Kandy
District, Lt.-Col. Henry Bird. The latter's brother, George, is
1 E. C. P. Hull, Coffee Planting in Southern India and Ceylon (London, E.&.F.N.
Spon, 1877).
29

generally regarded as the real pioneer since, Colonel Bird not being
able to work an estate himself, it was George who opened the land he
acquired at Sinnapitiya. It should be mentioned at once, however,
that the Birds are a complicated subject. In the first place, there were
two Lt.-Col. Birds the original purchaser of Sinnapitiya and his son,
Lt.-Col. H. C. Bird and in the middle of their planting career the
son changed the spelling of his name to Byrde (giving rise to a feeble
joke in Punch). George, 'a tall farmer-like' man who didn't get on too
well with the Colonels, stuck to Bird.
Sir Edward Barnes' estate was called Gangarooa (now spelt
Gannoruwa). It was only four miles from Kandy on the other side of
the Mahaweliganga, opposite the Peradeniya Botanic Gardens. In
the long and on the whole most impressive series of Governors whom
Britain sent to Ceylon, Sir Edward Barnes gets almost top marks,
both for enterprise and high spirits. According to some writers he
took the job because he did not see eye to eye with the GovernorGeneral of India, Lord William Bentinck, when he was Commanderin-Chief. But, delightful as it would be to think that Ceylon got its
pioneer of coffee through a quarrel with India's pioneer of tea (see
Chapter 3), I am afraid this is not really so, since the Bentinck affair
happened after Barnes had retired from Ceylon and undertaken a
second tour of duty in India.
Neither of the two primal estates exists as an independent unit
today. Gannoruwa remained in the Barnes family for some years, but
by about 188o it had been turned over to cocoa and then became a
Government Research Station. Any historically minded visitor who
strolls across the pretty suspension bridge from Peradeniya may be
rather pleased to find coffee there once more in the form of experimental plots.
For Sinnapitiya, once a domain of the Kandyan Kings, a stranger
fate was reserved. According to what John Ferguson claimed to be
authentic information from the Bird family, operations there became
`paralysed' after the death of Lt.-Col. Henry Bird from cholera in
1829. In 1846 the estate was sold to Frank Hudson, of the firm of
Hudson, Chandler, who formed a project for farming it on 'the
English principle', in conjunction with sugar cultivation. A farmer
and his family were brought out from England and gradually the old
decaying coffee stumps gave place to guinea grass good enough to
maintain a stock of horses and cattle. Whether this strange venture
would have succeeded or not we shall never know, as the whole
Hudson, Chandler agency business went smash only two years later.
30

Sinnapitiya, then reverted to the Bird family, J. C. Williams being
brought over from Waloya to get the coffee going again. From the
Birds it passed in due course to the Bousteads and into the maw of
the Oriental Bank, but part of it at least seems to have become
attached to the celebrated Mariawatte Tea Estate started by H. K.
Rutherford and his partners in 1879, of which much more will be
heard. Mariawatte itself met with vicissitudes. For a time it was
nothing but rubber and now it is mostly cut up for smallholdings.
There is also a small tea estate called Upper Sinnapitiya.
Both Sinnapitiya and Gannoruwa happened to be situated at
approximately 1,600 ft, and it seems to have been thought that this
was about right for coffee; however, when after a lapse of io or 12
years the example of the pioneers began to be followed, other elevations were tried. For example, the still well-known Pallekelly estate
was opened, a little lower down than Gannoruwa on the banks of the
Mahaweliganga, and in 1837 Lt.-Col. H. C. Byrde took what was
then regarded as the risky step of trying out coffee 3,000 ft up. This
was on virgin land on Black Forest, Pussellawa. It did well (though
Lt.-Col. Byrde never seems to have prospered personally), and it has
been suggested that the success of this clearing on Black Forest led
to the ultimate rush for land to grow coffee.
In fact, Ceylon was by now on the verge of a coffee boom. In view
of what we shall have to say later, it is only fair to emphasise at once
that behind the commercial ventures of such men as Sir Edward
Barnes lay a straightforward nineteenth-century faith in Britain's
destiny as an opener-up of so-called waste places and a pusher-on of
so-called backward peoples. This does not really need explaining, still
less explaining away; it was a burning fact whose light and heat
affected the whole international climate from well before the Victorian
era until almost our own time, and its still warm embers are strewn
round the world today. When the officialdom of Ceylon decided to
alienate the Crown lands at throw-away prices in order to encourage
coffee planting, and to let mighty forests be destroyed for the same
purpose, they no more doubted that they were benefiting mankind
than do the builders of giant dams in Asia and Africa today.
The trouble was that the agricultural revolution in Ceylon developed over-speedily into a race for speculative profits. Some grants of
Crown land (and all uncultivated land was unfortunately regarded as
such) were made for nothing in the early days; then as the speculators swarmed in, the 5s. od. an acre referred to by Hull began to be
charged, and finally, the 'upset' price was fixed at LI per acre. The
31
A HUNDRED TEARS OF CEYLON TEA

amount of land alienated rose from a mere 337 acres in 1834 to over
10,000 acres per annum in the late 183os, reaching a peak of 78,685
acres in the single year 1841. A lot of this land was bought purely as a
gamble and left uncultivated, but even so the acreage under coffee
grew from 4,000 in 1836 to over 37,000 acres in 1845.
What sort of people were the new owners? Though to the modern
ear the word 'speculator' hints inevitably at a hard-faced gentleman
with an intermediate accent and a bank balance in Zurich, it seems
that at least in the early days State officials, civil servants and the
'Establishment' generally were encouraged to take up Crown lands
in order to get the new industry under way. Government agents,
judges, soldiers, the clergy, all joined in. The allocations of land
were extremely handsome. Starting at the top, the Rt. Hon. J. A.
Stewart Mackenzie (Governor 1837-41) followed Barnes' example
and took up two areas of 1,024 and 1,120 acres respectively; Sir John
Wilson (Commander of the Forces) obtained 'a large acreage' in
Pussellawa (the modern New Peacock is part of it) and in Nilambe,
and his successor Sir John Arbuthnot 855 acres elsewhere; 1,583
acres of what was to be famous Rajawella was granted jointly to the
Hon. George Tumour (Government Agent, Kandy) and Col. M.
Lindsay of the 78th Regiment; Archdeacon Gleniel (Pussellawa
again the future Glenloch) and a Colonial Chaplain, the Rev. N.
Garstin, represented the clerical interest; while the Auditor-General
himself not only passed the accounts but took his own substantial
share.
It is all very well for Major Skinner (The Father of Roads') to say
in his quaint phraseology that in 1840 the 'officers of the Public
Service ran wild in re coffee planting', but in fact he had a whirl at it
himself in partnership with Sir W. 0. Carr, the Chief Justice. (He
records ruefully that their estate had just come into bearing when
through the removal of protective duties the price of coffee fell from
mos. a cwt. to 45s. just about the cost of production.)
At first nobody seems to have raised their eyebrows at this rush of
public servants into coffee speculation, except perhaps old James
Steuart, Master Attendant of Colombo Harbour, who grumbled
when he was forced to take the Civil Service oath against engaging in
1 The then editor of the Colombo Observer had some caustic things to say about
Glenie, whose pay as Archdeacon of Colombo was 2,000 a year. He was so busily
engaged in coffee planting in Pussellawa in 1841 that he was reprimanded by the
Secretary of State and ordered not to leave his 'station'. He retired in 1843 and
continued to extend his planting interests until in the Nuwara Eliya area alone he
owned 1,976 acres.
32

trade just when 'its stringency was being relaxed in favour of members of the Civil Service in order that they might become planters
and exporters'. Under growing criticism, however, the policy was
reversed in about 1845.
To complete this phase of coffee's brief but dazzling history,
it may be mentioned that only a few years later, in 1847, came a
collapse of confidence (partly through a financial crisis in England,
partly through the fiscal changes favouring Java and Brazil, which
torpedoed Major Skinner and the Chief Justice). The Bank of Ceylon
stopped payment, fine estates previously (and subsequently!) worth
five figures were sold to the first corner for a few hundred pounds, and
it has been estimated that up to one-tenth of those originally opened
were abandoned at this time. The centenary volume of the Planters'
Association feelingly quotes Sir Emerson Tennent's comment that
the land rush in Ceylon was comparable with the gold rushes of
Australia and California 'with the difference that the enthusiasts in
Ceylon, instead of thronging to disinter, were hurrying to bury their
gold'.1
I have not spent too long over these feverish transactions; they
are rich in rather painful human interest, but have comparatively
little direct bearing on the main theme of this book, the rise of Ceylon's
tea industry. What does deserve fuller treatment is the method by
which the land was actually opened up for planting, and the origins
and characteristics of the men who did the work on site.
The very earliest estates do not seem to have involved extensive
jungle-clearing, being on flat ground near the rivers, and we glimpse
a peaceful though not very practical scene of the land being ploughed
with elephants. All the same, the great leit motif of the coffee planting
era was what John Capper calls the 'merry chime' of axes felling the
glorious forests which then clothed the central mountains of Ceylon.
I propose to lay Capper under heavier contribution than just for
that tinkling phrase about the axes. A former planter and member of
the Legislative Council, who took over the Times of Ceylon in 1858,
his book Old Ceylon Sketches of Ceylon Life in the Olden Time'. was
not published till 1878, but it was based on articles contributed to
Dickens' Household Words more than a quarter of a century before.
Capper had a sharp eye, though his observations too often reach us
through a misty Dickensian filter; he even drags a sort of Sinhalese
Little Nell into one of his tales. However, his picture of just how fifty
1 History of Ceylon
(London, Longmans, 5th ed. 186o).

London, W. B. Whittingham.
33

acres of what he calls `Soolookande' estate was cleared for planting is
the most detailed and vivid that could be desired:
`Leading our horses slowly between the huge rocks that lay thickly
around, we at last came to a part of the forest where the heavy, quick
click of many axes told us there was a working party busily employed.
Before us a short distance in the jungle, were the swarthy compact
figures of some score or two of low country Cingalese plying their small
axes with a rapidity and precision that was truly marvellous. . . .
'To me it was a pretty, as well as a novel sight, to watch the felling
work in progress. Two axe-men to small trees; three, and sometimes
four, to larger ones; their little bright tools flung far back over their
shoulders with a sharp flourish, and then, with a "whirr", dug in the
heart of the tree, with such exactitude and in such excellent time, that
the scores of axes flying about me seemed impelled by some mechanical
contrivance, sounding but as one or two instruments. I observed that in
no instance were the trees cut through, but each one was left with just
sufficient of the stem intact to keep it upright. . . .
Ìn half an hour the signal was made to halt, by blowing a conch shell;
obeying the order of the superintendent, I hastened up the hill as fast
as my legs would convey me, over rocks and streams, halting at the top,
as I saw the whole party do. They were ranged in order, axes in hand
on the upper side of the topmost row of cut trees. I got out of their way,
watching anxiously every moment. All being ready the manager sounded
the conch sharply, two score voices raised a shout that made me start
again; forty bright axes gleamed high in air, then sank deeply into as
many trees, which at once yielded to the sharp steel, groaned heavily,
waved their huge branches to and fro, like drowning giants, then toppled
over, and fell with a stunning crash upon the trees below them. These
having been cut through previously, offered no resistance, but followed
the example of their upper neighbours, and fell booming on those
beneath.''
The burning-off process, which was the next stage, is almost
equally well described by another keen observer, Miss C. F. Gordon
Cumming:
`There is great luck in the matter of burns. Sometimes the fires die out
too soon, and the timber is insufficiently burnt. Sometimes they rage too
furiously, and the soil is scorched to such a depth as to be grievously
1 William Boyd was sceptical about some of the claims made for this method
of jungle-clearing. He himself never saw more than half an acre, 'let alone a whole
hill-side', instantaneously demolished in this way (Ceylon Literary Register, 1886).
Boyd's reminiscences appeared in the Register in two different forms - as the semifictional Memoirs of a Periya Durai (afterwards brought out in book form, Colombo,
Ferguson, 1889) and as articles reprinted from the Aberdeen Free Press. The
latter are perhaps the more informative.
34

injured. No sooner is the land cooled than an army of coolies overspread
it, and cut square holes in every possible corner, no matter how rocky
the soil (indeed, the rockier the better), or how dizzy the precipitous
height; wherever a crevice can be found, there a precious little bush
must be inserted, and after a while, as its roots expand, a small artificial
terrace must probably be built, to afford them space and prevent the
rains from washing all the earth from their roots. Nothing can be more
hideous than the country at this stage.
Àfter a while, however, matters improve, and by the time the coffee
shrubs attain their proper size, the whole country becomes densely
clothed with glossy green, and though the black stumps and great
charred trunks remain standing for many a year, they do gradually
decay, or else become so bleached by the sun that the coffee fields
resemble a gigantic cemetery, with headstones utterly without number.'1
And it can be commented that while nobody claims great aesthetic
qualities for the individual tea bush, opinion with regard to coffee is
less decisive. One visitor remarks that 'two or three hundred acres
planted with coffee do not improve the landscape, giving it a rather
scrubby appearance'; and another, journeying from Nawalapitya to
Lindula in the 188os, states quite firmly that the 'very fine' scenery
is 'marred by the endless coffee plantations'. For the defence, we must
quote again from Sir Emerson Tennent, who took a positively lyrical
view:
'A plantation of coffee is at every season an object of beauty and
interest . . . the polished dark green leaves . . . flowers of the purest
white ... jasmine-like perfume so strong as to be oppressive ... bunches
of crimson berries resembling cherries in their appearance and size.'
One springtime visitor, E. C.
poem:
P. Hull, was almost moved to a prose
'Under the influence of the showers which usually fall in March . . .

the advance relay of buds bursts into bloom, and the planter rises one
morning to find the entire estate profusely decorated with snowy garlands and the atmosphere heavy with their perfume . . . the millions of
snowy wreaths resting on their background of dark green luxuriant
bushes . . . produce altogether an effect not readily to be forgotten!'
But, what (if we may revert, in a spirit of respectful imitation, to
the Manner of Mr Capper) is that squalid erection with mud walls
and thatched roof in the midst of the young coffee a fowl house, a
1 C. F. Gordon Cumming, Two Happy Years in Ceylon (London, Chatto &
Windus, 1893).
35

tool-shed? Read on, and share Mr Capper's astonishment when his
friends beckon him to enter the low, dark door:
`This miserable little cabin could not have been more than twelve
feet long by about six feet wide, and as high at the walls. This small space
was lessened by heaps of tools, coils of string for "lining" the ground
before planting, sundry boxes and baskets, an old rickety table, and one
chair. At the farther end, if anything could be far in that hole, was a
jungle bedstead formed by driving green stakes in the floor and walls,
and stretching rope across them. I could not help expressing astonishment at the miserable quarters provided for one who had so important
a charge, and such costly outlay to make. My host, however, treated the
matter very philosophically . . . indeed, he told me, that when he had
finished putting up this little crib, had moved in his one table and chair,
and was seated, cigar in mouth, inside the still damp mud walls, he
thought himself the happiest of mortals.'
That is Capper in good form and even if he had been a draughtsman as well as a writer he could hardly have provided a more sharply
visual sketch of 'my planting friend', superintending operations in
full jungle costume:
À sort of wicker helmet was on his head, covered with a long padded
white cloth, which hung far down his back, like a baby's quilt. A shooting
jacket and trousers of checked country cloth; immense leech-gaiters
fitting close inside the roomy canvas boots; and a Chinese-paper
umbrella made up his singular attire.'
The earliest planters were, as a matter of fact, a rough and ready
lot. The era of the rather grand proprietary planter came a little later.
The speculators in coffee land hired superintendents when and how
they could. Few had had an agricultural training 'frequently of no
or very poor education, people who as adventurers came to the
country or who were bought out of the regimental ranks' and given
salaries of no more than zoo a year. These military cast-offs tried
to boost their status by a familiar manceuvre they all became Captains, 'Take the Ramboda district in 1854,' says P. D. Millie,1 who
was there. 'With the exception of the estate above the bridge, they
were all Captains from Kondegalla down to well into Pussellawa,
and even there also the Captain flourished.' The life was both solitary
I am grateful to Mr M. V. Murugiah, formerly of Choisy Estate (Pundaluoya),
for drawing my attention to P. D. Millie's Thirty Years Ago (Colombo, Ferguson,
1878). In spite of the old-fashioned cosiness of some of the writing, it gives a
marvellous picture of early planting days and is particularly good on the psychology
of the Tamil worker.
36

and monotonous; with no railways and few roads the planters were
even worse off than Sydney Smith in his Yorkshire parish (`twelve
miles from a lemon') they were sometimes twice that distance from
anything except salt beef and biscuit. No wonder that when a group
of these tough characters, after threading the jungle on horseback,
got together on a Saturday night, the letting down of hair took a
riotous form.
This was a little before the era of the Knuckles Bricks, but we get
the tone from that convivial set who opened up the then wild district
of Knuckles Range, way up in the north-east beyond Kandy, during
the 185os. Ferguson explains that it was 'one or two notable fellows
who got the soubriquet of Knuckles Bricks, at that time an honourable appellation, though afterwards aped and brought into contempt
by a low set who assumed the term and were simply blackguards'.
They are commemorated in William Skeen's gravely named but far
from solemn little volume Mountain Life and Coffee Cultivation in
Ceylon a Poem on the Knuckles Range, with Other Poem'. From his
elegy on the Bricks I quote:
`More generous hospitable men
'Twere hard to find, 'twere good to ken;
Men whose traditions down will be
Handed to late posterity.
Yet of a stamp that never more
May time to Lanka's Isle restore.
An efflorescence of wild mirth,
Bursting restraint, gave sudden birth
To strangest vagaries and vents,
When from their forest-life and tents
Or rude thatch'd huts and ruder fare,
To town they rush'd, and freely there,
Like sailors fresh from year long cruise
All cock-a-hoop for aught to amuse;
Or Californian diggers, wild
To squander gold, dust, nuggets, piled,
Gave to their spirits high the rein
And heedless thus, while in the vein,
O'erflowing with convivial glee,
And rash in their rare jollity,
Grave Mrs Grundy, sober, prim,
Outraged and shock'd and render'd grim!'
The passing of the Bricks, and their noisy get-togethers with the
1 London, Stanford, 1868.
37

Dumbara boys in Degalla bungalow, are also noted by Capper. It
is in his pages that we find perhaps the source and fountain-head of
a legend which has haunted the planters of Ceylon from the earliest
days right down to our own time:
`The small bungalow in which these protracted revels were held (he
says) has long since disappeared; its site, thickly overgrown with thorny
brushwood and lantana, was once sought for by friends of one of the
early planters and was at length discovered by the vast memorial mound
of empty bottles piled up about the lonely spot.'
The 'mound of empty bottles' has continued to rear its inelegant
head at regular intervals ever since; by the early 188os it was reported
that the 'pyramids rivalling those of Egypt' outside the bungalows
had notably diminished; however, Sir Thomas Villiers (see page RH)
reverts to the theme in connection with Yapame Store in 1886, when
through a change in delivery arrangements, this store's trade had
dwindled and 'the way into Madulsima was no longer barricaded by
stacks of empty beer bottles'. For the defence, it can be argued that
the whole phenomenon was a tribute to the indestructibility of glass
as much as to the capacity of planters? P. D. Millie, no toper, fairly
groaned over the accumulation which reached to his kitchen gable,
but sensibly reminds us that there could be no question of returning
èmpties' on carriers' heads! His solution was to stick them in the
ground bottoms up, and so provide 'a glittering line of edging to my
garden paths'.
The fascinating question of whether planters did (and do) drink
more than other comparable groups of human beings need not be
pursued here, at least I have no intention of becoming involved! It
was amusingly dealt with in the first edition of Harry Williams'
Ceylon, Pearl of the East2; perhaps his statistical analysis of his own
planting neighbours gives about the right picture: 'Three teetotallers,
seven light drinkers, one old warrior of the bottle and one who
bordered on a soak'.
So much at the moment for the life and recreations of the planter.
We shall see how they were gradually transformed later on, but there
is no doubt that both were much affected in the early days by the
1 We must certainly acquit poor young Frederick Lewis, the site of whose
bungalow at Ion, only distinguishable by the same old landmark, was pointed out
to me by W. 3. Childerstone in November x965. As we learn from his moving
autobiography Sixty-Four Years in Ceylon (Colombo Apothecaries Co., x926),
Lewis was only 21 when he was flung upon that wild mountainside, and much too
earnest and impoverished to have time for the bottle.
London, Robert Hale, 195o.
38
monotony of the job once the exciting phase of clearing the jungle
was over. There was no comparison with tea in this respect. Instead
of the year-round activity of plucking and manufacture, the coffee
harvest occupied only two or three months of the year.
It began as a rule about the beginning of November and went on
till mid-January, though in the Low-country, where the crop ripened
more rapidly, it all had to be got in within a month or six weeks.
Water power was much used hence the fact that many of the factories (`stores' as they were called) were built rather low down by the
streams and in some cases were moved later on to airier locations
more suitable for withering tea. 'Spouting' the transport of the
beans to the factory by water running through metal troughs anticipated by more than a century a modern technique (applied in
America even to coal). At the factory the main processes were:
pulping; fermenting in huge vats in order to make it easier to remove
the skin; and drying in the sun on what were called 'barbecues' of
whitened stone (Plate ia).
To get the coffee to Colombo was almost a greater problem than to
grow it. Often there was no cart-road from the estate and the coffee
had to be carried in two-bushel bags on men's heads to a point where
bullock wagons could take over (in some areas the workers continued
with their head loads right down to Colombo). Millie says flatly that
this was `no fit work for a coolie', and involved the proprietors in
immense loss of time and labour just when the latter was most in
request for 'crop', as harvesting was called.
Normally, the coffee was taken over at the cart-road by contractors,
a class of men about whom, it was once tersely remarked, 'the senders
generally knew absolutely nothing, and in whose honesty they had
every reason to disbelieve'. The cartmen were supposed to see the
coffee measured and sign a way-bill undertaking to deliver a like
quantity in good order at Colombo within a given number of days.
But theft and dishonesty were rife. A particular hazard to which this
transport system was exposed, and which may well have accounted
for many a missing load, is denounced with amusing vehemence in
the Planting Intelligence column of the Ceylon Overland Observer
for 12 October 1853:
`Taverns multiply with amazing rapidity on all roads leading to
Estates. What a pity Government permits these petty nests of iniquity
to be multiplied at pleasure, as much of the roguery and immorality of
the country proceed from the sale and abuse of their abominable fire
water.'
39

Having escaped the depredations of the cartmen, the coffee was
delivered to depots in Colombo (at a transport cost reckoned at about
3d. per mile), and here again there was a strong contrast with tea
procedure. Owing to erratic weather in the coffee-growing country,
the beans usually needed a further week or so of strong Colombo
sunshine, and vast drying-grounds were laid out for this purpose.
After that came the picking over of the beans (largely done by women)
and massive machines then removed the 'parchment' envelope.
Great mills (doomed to vanish within half a century or be adapted to
other purposes) were set up Bloominghall Mills, the United Channel
Island Stores, the New Banff Establishment. . . . Thus coffee began
the transformation of Colombo which was completed by tea. Capper
remembered when the area still known as the Fort was the only
residential zone for Europeans (Plate 20), and we may take leave of
him for the moment, lamenting the change in his own unmistakable
tone of voice:
'Now the merchants need every foot of room that is available within
the Fort. Officers have been driven to their military quarters; civilians
have taken flight in all directions; and now, without the walls, rice is
doing in the Pettah, what coffee has accomplished within. The Burgher
element has receded before the absorbing Chetties and Moormen, and
one may stroll along Main Street or Keyzer Street on any fine moonlight
night, and hear no sound of music, or soft voice within the walls, meet
no graceful forms, and see no dark bright eye, or well turned ancle in
wide, illuminated verandahs.'
(The dear old gentleman did not, of course, live to see the coming
of girl clerks and the reappearance of the 'well turned ancle' in the
Fort!)
So far this chapter has dealt with the planter and merchant; we
have had only one or two glimpses of the estate workers but these
were significant. In the forest-clearing scenes, the wielders of the
'merry' little axes were obviously Sinhalese craftsmen, who excelled
at this work. On the other hand every witness concurs that from the
very start of coffee-growing the Kandyan peasantry showed no taste
for estate labour as such even though the work was seasonal; once
the forest was cleared and the carpentry of factories and bungalows
completed they went back to their villages and the ancient communal
life.
After that, immigrant Tamil labour took over. There is no question
of identifying the moment when some definite proposal was made to
40

draw workers from what the Planters' Association centenary volume'
calls the 'barren and over-populated areas of South India'. Immigrant
labour, often under the much criticised indenture system, was already
familiar in the East; indeed, according to a Memorandum by the
Ceylon Emigration Commissioner printed in 1938, the Dutch gave
some employment to Indians in the cinnamon gardens. He goes on to
state that in 1827 the Indian estate population in Ceylon was 10,000 though it is hard to imagine what sort of plantations were employing
such numbers. By 1846, according to the same source, the figure had
increased to 8o,000. H. J. Sucklings gives the following figures for
'the arrival of coolies from the Malabar Coast' in the 184os: 1841,
4,000; 1842, 9,000; 1843, 6,000; 1844, 74,00o; 1845, 72,000; 1846,
41,000; 1847, 44,00o; 1848, 32,00o; and this more or less ties up with
the Labour Commissioner's later statistics.
The first British planter, however, to recruit labour deliberately
from South India was that same Lt.-Col. Byrde who so boldly went
up to 3,00o ft with his coffee in 1837. It was in the year 1844 that the
Conductor (field overseer) from Black Forest, himself half-Tamil,
half-Sinhalese, was sent to his native Trincomalee to find a suitable
Tamil to represent Lt.-Col. Byrde in South India. He was successful,
and the man returned in due course with 14 labourers.
From that time onwards there was more or less continuous recruitment. The normal method was to advance money to a kangani (Tamil
word for overseer or gang leader), and he then went off to the coastal
area of South India to whip up recruits. Easy to imagine the scene the wily fellow squatting down in the village street and 'telling the
tale' to the lean and hungry locals. He showed them money too, of
course the old technique of the 'King's shilling', used by recruiting
sergeants in redcoat days. Those who accepted were marshalled into
large gangs and brought across to the coast of Ceylon by boat. They
then travelled down the North Road (in conditions which will be
more fully described later on) and eventually those that survived
reached the estates for which they were bound. In fact, although the
kangani, like the recruiting sergeant, had something genuine to offer
any young peasant employment, a living wage, food and shelter at
somebody else's expense instead of the eternal scratching away at his
own starveling fields the scope for abuses in such a system is only
too obvious.
The Tea Planters' Association of Ceylon 1854-1954 (Colombo, Times of Ceylon,
1954).
A General Description of Ceylon (London, Chapman & Hall, 2 vols., 1871).
41

It was not until the first, crude generation of pioneers had passed
away that the planters became sensitive to this1. However, at the inaugural committee meeting of the Planters' Association of Ceylon, on
13 March 1854, a Sub-Committee was formed to go into the cost of
providing rest sheds and water supplies along the North Road route.
They reported on 23 May that three shelters could be erected at 'an
individual cost of ki5o each. The planters thought that the Government ought not to hesitate in supplying `so inconsiderable an amount'
for 'a purpose so humane, and for the shelter and protection of a class
of men on whom the staple interest of the colony . . . is dependent'.
Vigorous correspondence with the Assistant Government Agent at
Mannar, the Government Agent for the Northern Province and the
Colonial Secretary ended in the money being voted and the shelters
built about a year later. The planters themselves, helped by a small
Government grant, raised enough funds to provide shelters at Kandy
and Gampola.
The root of the evil, however, remained untouched, and was quickly
recognised by a Dolosbage planter, Hugh McClennan of Kelvin
Estate. In 1861 he put forward an amazingly far-sighted memorandum
to the Chairman of the Planters' Association, R. B. Tytler the first
authentic guide-post to this tangled, prolonged and sometimes neartragic story, fresh chapters of which are still being written in our own
time.
McClennan's main recommendations were that, each season, estimates for labour required and cheques covering necessary advances
should be sent by estates to an official to be stationed on the Indian
coast; that kanganis should be compelled to carry printed passes
showing the numbers in their gangs, and made accountable for any
missing; that labourers found at large should be taken up as runaways,
to stop the 'crimping system which is a disgrace to coffee planters';
that the agent on the coast should send the same men to the same
estate each year unless specially requested otherwise (this shows that
labour was then envisaged as purely migratory); that labourers should
be allowed to remit money through the agent, or have regular monthly
allowances to their families stopped out of their wages; that there
should be provision for medical 'vetting'.
Tytler's reply that the P.A. was 'too weak and insecure to be the
pivot of so large a scheme' had reason behind it and, unfortunately,
it was just 48 years before McClennan's proposals were met in full.
1 Earlier conditions can be studied in Part III of K. M. de Silva's Social Policy
and Missionary Organisations in Ceylon, 1840-55 (London, Longmans, 1965).
42

Meanwhile, everyone just stumbled on. Despite the large figures
recorded in the earlier days, the system did not even produce enough
'bodies' it was reported in the early 186os that coffee planting in the
Dimbula district had been at a standstill for 14 months for lack of
labour; some estates had only 20-25 labourers where 100-150 were
needed. By 1864 Patrick Ryan (St. Clair, Dimbula), had taken up
McClennan's tale with a somewhat similar proposal for a Ceylon
Coolie Immigration Association, but he did not get anywhere either.
The next overt action (and we will close this section of the immigrant labour story with it) was again by the P.A. and took the form of a
request to the Colonial Secretary in 1867 that hospitals should be
established on the India side of the Pamban. Channel, otherwise men
were landed 'without any prospect of obtaining medical assistance
and, in some cases are left to die uncared and unprovided for'. 'On
the mere score of humanity,' the memorandum adds, 'something
should be done to relieve the sufferings of those attacked', but it was
hoped that 'when it is considered to what extent the colony is indebted
to the Tamil coolie . . . His Excellency will see fit to accede to the
request which can be carried out by the Government alone'.
It is pleasing to be able to record that as a result of this demarche
the Governments of Ceylon and India did get together and temporary
hospital buildings were erected for immigrant labour on the Indian
coast.
43
Chapter 3
HOW TEA CAME TO CEYLON

'Wherever tea trees grow, the place, whether a mountain or a valley,
is sacred.'
'DRINKING OF TEA: RULES OF HEALTH'
Japanese, Twelfth Century
OONER or later some crew-cut scholar, burrowing away in the

computerised library of a Middle West University, will devote a
few years to sorting out the legends which surround the origins
of tea, and publish the results in the form of a heavyweight thesis.
Pending these much-needed excavations, however, the cause of
accuracy and common sense would be well served if everyone writing
about the tea plant were content to state simply that Camellia sinensis
was cultivated, and the infusion of its leaves enjoyed, throughout the
Chinese Empire a very long time ago.
The present writer, at any rate, is quite happy to take up the story
as recently as 1834. This was in fact tea's great moment of destiny,
when the first step was taken by which it ceased to be the exclusively
'China drink' welcomed to England by Samuel Pepys about 170 years
before. The moment, in other words, when, with the Manchu
Empire crumbling and the East India Company's monopoly at an
end, the time had. come to make a completely fresh start in supplying
the people of the West with tea.
The period was propitious. In the seething, proliferating cities and
towns of the new industrial era, there was an almost explosive demand
for a cheap and stimulating drink which would offer the whole family
an alternative to the stupefying tyranny of beer. Tea until then had
been on the whole genteel the only article (together with a few
sweets for the children) which Miss Matty, after the crash of the
Town & County Bank, could without derogation offer for sale by
retail to the ladies of Cranford. Now the teapot stood ready on every
kitchen hob; it was the natural medium for modest hospitality ('Won't
you take a cup of tea, my dear?'); and of course a glorious steaming
weapon in the armoury of the United Grand Junction Ebenezer
Temperance Association!
Whether or not Lord William Bentinck had these considerations
44

in mind on 24 January 1834 when he signed his famous Minute
calling for a Committee to investigate the possibilities of growing tea
in India, he clearly believed he was on a rising market. Almost directly
the Committee had been set up, its first Secretary, G. J. Gordon, was
dispatched to China to seek tea seeds and plants, and was succeeded
by the famous Dr Wallich, of the Botanic Gardens, Calcutta.
There was a political, as well as a commercial, aim behind Lord
William's initiative. The Province of Assam, nearest region of India
to the Chinese tea districts, was then 'a wild land, misgoverned and
scantily populated'. Government wanted it to be placed on a settled,
prosperous footing and was prepared to offer liberal terms to anyone
prepared to cultivate its waste spaces; note too that this invitation was
extended to Indians from other Provinces and not merely to Europeans.
The broad result of all this was that tea, from being an immemorial
smallholder's crop in China and (marginally) in adjoining countries,
was transformed within a decade or two into being the great plantation crop of British India. That word 'plantation' is crucial. Virtually from the start the objective was what we now call 'factory
farming'.
True, there was one brief rush up a blind alley. Though the world
talks universally of a tea 'bush', Camellia sinensis in its natural state
is a tall and quite sturdy forest tree, growing in some instances to over
3o ft in height it can in fact be seen doing so on a number of tea
estates so that the free-flowering branches may supply the planter
with his seed (Plate i7b). It is only subdued into a bush by having its
head chopped off to suit the convenience of the rather small-statured
tea-plucking ladies waist high for them is round about 3 ft 4 in.
Now this tree and its somewhat complicated cousinhood are native
to the forests of South-East Asia over a very wide area, as Kingdon
Ward and many other botanical explorers have shown. Already some
ten years before the Committee held its first meeting, reports had
come in of wild tea growing in Assam itself, though Wallich was
sceptical about specimens sent down to him he thought they were
more probably some other species of camellia. Mainly for this reason,
the claim to be the first discoverer of Assam indigenous tea was hotly
contested between C. A. Bruce, who with his brother Robert provided these early exhibits (1825), and Lt. Andrew Charlton of the
Assam Light Infantry, who wrote his first memorandum on tea trees
found near Sadiyah in 1831, and finally convinced the Committee
with specimens submitted towards the end of 1834. Meanwhile, as
45
the result of a circular sent to local officials in March of that year,

the whole subject was in effervescence; district commissioners were
asked for news of any 'tea tracts', as they were called, and soon
reports came flooding in.
So numerous were these 'tracts' that there were not lacking advocates for a system of burning off (or hacking down) the jungle in such
localities and letting only the tea grow up again. But the blind alley
quickly closed, and the first tea actually manufactured in India was
produced on the plantation system. This was from bushes which had
started life as forest seedlings but had been transplanted into a
nursery set up for the reception of China plants. It must be added that
it is still far from clear whether and to what extent these tea tracts
represented completely wild tea or were the remains of ancient
cultivation by the people of Assam, to whom the virtues of the plant
had been known from a very early period.
And what of G. j. Gordon and his China jat seeds and seedlings
so arduously collected and dispatched to Calcutta? The neck-andneck competition between China jat and Assam jat provides an
exciting phase of tea's history. Scientific opinion was much divided
Wallich led the pro-Assam party, but one of his most forceful
technical colleagues, Assistant-Surgeon Griffith, was in the opposite
camp. Gordon's first consignments arrived at the very moment when
the exploration of Assam wild tea was at its height, and the result was
that he was quickly recalled. Nevertheless, he had already (as we say)
`started something', and no fewer than 42,000 plants grown from his
seeds were distributed in Assam, the sub-Himalaya region and in
South India.
Many of them died, and attention was switched to the Assam jat;
nevertheless more China seeds and plants continued to arrive in
1841 William Prinsep reports some 7,000 China plants 'just received'.
In at least one case, Dr C. R. Harler informs us:
Ìn order to work up or reclaim the Assam plant as rapidly as possible,
wild and China tea were interplanted. This led happily to the death of
both varieties. Subsequent experience showed that neither the China
plant nor the China hybrid does as well in North-East India as the
indigenous plant.11
Assam jat . . . China jat. . . . It is high time that the non-technical
reader should be given some explanation of such terms as these,
1 The Culture and the Marketing of Tea (London, Oxford University Press, 3rd
Ed. 1964), page 133.
46

which are part of the very fabric of the tea industry; indeed we have
not yet formally introduced Camellia sinensis itself.
For myself, I find this name (which in its full botanical form is
Camellia sinensis (L) 0. Kuntze) more than a little vexatious. Tea is a
camellia, agreed; but up till as recently as 195o the name of the plant
had always incorporated, through all vicissitudes, the word thea Tea used in the first, though not the second, volume of Linnaeus'
'Species Plantarum' (1753). Camellia thea . . . Camellia theifera. . . .
Thea sinensis . . . nothing to be said against any of these. Now, only
one genus is recognised, and for technical reasons which need not
concern us here', the 6th Botanical Congress at Amsterdam (1933)
finally robbed the tea plant of its distinctive title, and decreed that the
Tea Camellia should be the Chinese Camellia and nothing morel
Bidding the botanists a rather chilly farewell, we can now turn to
the breeder of tea plants and the terms that are familiar to him.
Dr Harler gives a clear account:
'The planter recognises three varieties, China, Assam, and IndoChina, and hybrids between all three. Within the Assam variety, five
types are recognised, the light- and the dark-leaved Assam, the Manipurl, the Burma and the Lushai. The Indo-China variety is sometimes
referred to as the Cambodian or Southern form. . . . The Planter does
not speak of varieties, types, races, agrotypes, ecotypes . . . he uses the
vague term jat (Hind. caste) for any group, though agrotype might
be a better term. Tea seed is sold under the name of the estate on which
it is grown, and this is also spoken of as the fat of the seed, but here the
name has no botanical significance unless the true fat or agrotype is
linked with it.'2
Harler goes on to sketch the characteristics of the various fats the
China, with its many stems and its small, frost-resistant leaves; the
Indo-China, single-stemmed, its leaves smooth and slightly serrated,
a likely contributor of 'quality' to the high-grown Ceylons; and the
five Assam fats, among which he gives the palm to the Manipuri and
the Assam dark-leaved.
The most unobservant wanderer through the average Ceylon tea
estate can detect these varied influences among the hybrids which
surround him, and which can produce enormous and disconcerting
variation in bush yields in a single field.3 In particular he will note the
1 The full story is told in Robert Sealy, A Revision of the Species Camellia,
(London, Royal Horticultural Society, 1958).
' op. cit.
3 Dr C. P. Cohen Stuart in his A Basis for Tea Selection (Indonesia, Buitenzorg
Research Station, 1919) is scathing about the early methods of choosing seed both
in India and Ceylon, and describes the latter as 'an awful medley of tea hybrids'.
47

persistence of the China fat. Most theorists take a poor view of this
tough little northerner, so much better suited to resisting the winter
frosts of China, the Himalayan foothills and the Caucasus, than
providing the rich yields which the climate and soil of Ceylon seem
designed to encourage. Yet it has its friends. 'A hardy warrior,' said
one planter, gazing down at a wind-pinched denizen of one of his
bleaker fields and brushing his hand across its meagre flush, 'not at
all to be sniffed at or rather, its liquor should be sniffed at so
delightful on the nose!'
It is not the intention to pursue here the tremendous story of the

tea industry of India; this has been done by various hands, and currently, in magisterial form, by Sir Percival Griffiths.' We would
only note two points vital to Ceylon's own story: The 'factory farming' aspect of the enterprise, already referred to, and the long-lived
nature of Camellia sinensis, as revealed in plantation conditions.
Setting out a 'field' of tea is not quite like any other agricultural
operation in the world. It is an ceuvre de longue haleine, as French
writers say about their wordier theses; you are planting neither a
wood, nor an orchard, nor a shrubbery, yet the result shares the
nature of all three, and its life is immeasurable. The jungle tree puts
down its great root and rears its sturdy stem; the rows sweep along
the contours (or should do! Plate 7b) as neatly as young apple trees
in Kent; and when time and the pruners have done their work the
picture is nearer to laurels en masse than to any other known vegetation.
And once the tea bush has come into bearing, it remains your
master and your slave for almost as long as you choose to let it (and
there a danger lurks!). Unlike coffee or cocoa, for example, it is not
just a question of waiting for an annual crop to ripen and to be
gathered in one furious operation, because of course what you are
essentially doing to the tea bush is to keep pruning it lightly every
few days year in year out (as well as drastically every so often) and
converting the 'prunings' into the hard black aromatic substance
known to the world as tea. The bush may become diseased or die,
and have to be replaced, or a whole field may be replanted from time
1 A History of the Indian Tea Industry (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967).
I have had the advantage of being allowed to revise this chapter from a study of
Sir Percival's MS.
48

to time, at great expense, with a higher-yielding strain, but the
`garden' (India) or èstate' (Ceylon) remains substantially changeless;
on that particular portion of the earth's surface, tea has dug itself in.
The rigidity which this long-lived nature of the tea plant tends to
impose on the economy of any country dependent largely upon it,
such as Ceylon, is something to be borne in mind by every reader of
this book. It has been estimated that despite all 'supplying' and
replanting, up to 7o per cent of the tea bushes now being plucked in
Ceylon are (for better or worse!) those put out by the pioneers before
1885.
How long before did it all start? A good deal earlier even than the
year 1867, which for reasons which will be fully revealed in the next
chapter, has been chosen as marking the commencement of A
Hundred Years of Ceylon Tea.
We can safely ignore the various references to indigenous 'tea'
growing in various parts of the island back in Dutch and even Portuguese times, since it is 99 per cent certain that whatever leaf may have
been infused, the result was some sort of tisane and not tea. On the
other hand it would be surprising if some travelled man did not bring
back to Ceylon a specimen of the interesting and useful Camellia
sinensis and try it in his back yard after all that is the way the vicarage
gardens of England became so strangely populated with yuccas and
monkey puzzles and pampas grass in the nineteenth century! By a
happy chance we know of at least one such incident in long-ago
Ceylon. It was during 1816 that the Rev. Mr Ringletaube wrote to
the Rev. James Richards, a newly arrived missionary who was then
trying to settle in the island:
Ìt would go a great way with Government to sanction your stay in
Ceylon if you could point out a plan of great national import. An idea
has struck me. In the garden of Mr Cripp, Master Attendant at Colombo,
I am told grows the TEA PLANT. Were you to offer that you would introduce the culture of this most valuable PLANT in Ceylon, somewhere near
Colombo (for instance, at Caltura where Government has a piece of
ground well fitted, which formerly belonged to my kind host, Mr
Moyard) perhaps the offer would take.'1
Whether the Master Attendant really had an authentic tea bush in
1 Communicated by Mr Wykeham Dulling. `Mr Cripp', by the way, was in fact
Mr Chrisp, friend and predecessor of James Steuart, the 'father' of the Colombo
agency house system.
49
his garden and whether Mr Ringletaube's suggestion was followed

up we are unlikely ever to know, but there may be a link between
this story and the alleged existence of tea bushes in Ceylon's former
botanic gardens at Kalutara. In any case, a tenuous chance of putting
Ceylon twenty years ahead of Assam seems to have been missed.
For solid tea-planting news from the island we have to wait those
twenty years, but not much more! In December 1839 tea became part
of the history of the famous Royal Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya,
near Kandy. It was this great foundation (focus until the coming of the
Tea Research Institute of all progressive ideas about the cultivation
of tea) that received and sowed the first authenticated batch of tea
seeds to reach Ceylon. The story has often been told how some of the
resultant young bushes were sent, rather inexplicably, to Nuwara
Eliya at that time known only as a health resort and planted out
on the land of the Chief Justice, Sir Anthony Oliphant. The true
sequence of events can, however, be pieced together from two
sources, and though still incomplete is at least understandable. The
first is the Peradeniya Administrative Report for 1886 by Dr H.
Trimen, the then Director. Remarking that anything about tea,
`which has now stepped into the first rank of our exports', had become
of interest, he goes on as follows:
`This is the proper place to put on record the facts with regard to the
first introduction of Assam tea into this Colony. In December, 1839, Dr
Wallich, the eminent Indian botanist, at that time at the head of the
Calcutta Botanic Gardens, sent to Peradeniya seeds of the then recently
discovered "Indigenous Assam Tea"; and these were followed in
February, 184o, by zos plants. In May, the then Superintendent at
Peradeniya, Mr Normansell, sent several plants to Nuwara Eliya, and a
man was supplied to look after them. This was after a representation to
Government that tea was likely to prove a "new and profitable speculation" and a "valuable source of revenue". Again, in April, 1842, another
instalment of Assam plants was received from Dr Wallich, and in October some of these were sent to Mr Mooyart at Nuwara Eliya, with
directions for cultivating them.
Ì had often wondered what became of these, and by accident in
London I met the gentleman to whose care they were committed, the
Rev. E. F. Gepp, at that time tutor to the son of Sir A. Oliphant, Chief
Justice of Ceylon. He informed me that in October, 1842, he received
the plants from Mr Mooyart at Nuwara Eliya, about thirty in number,
and cleared a piece of jungle for them on Sir Anthony's land there; they
were doing well when he left the Island a few years after. Mr Gepp
thinks the ground was somewhere in the neighbourhood of the present
SO

Queen's Cottage, and it will be worth a search to discover whether some
of the plants may not be still in existence.'
So here we have quite a lot about the how of the Nuwara Eliya
venture, if not the why. Fortunately, Trimen adds a footnote which
directs us to our second witness: 'Since writing the above I find that
Mr Gepp communicated these facts in a letter to the London Times,
dated August 19. He is however mistaken in supposing the plants to
have come from China.'
Before following this up, however, it should be remarked that in
the absence of data at Peradeniya it is not possible to say what was
done with the plants which did not go to Nuwara Eliya, except that
from later evidence they almost certainly formed the basis of a permanent nursery in the Botanic Gardens. Nor can we amplify Trimen's
statement about the 'representation' made to Government, nor establish just how Mr Mooyart came into the picture (he was evidently a
member of the ancient Dutch burgher' family of that name, which
according to the Ceylon Literary Register had become extinct by the
188os).
Now to The Times and Mr Gepp. In 1886 a Colonial and Indian
Exhibition was held in London, and The Times gave a notice of it in
its issue of i8 August. In describing the Ceylon Court, reference was
made to the first tea plants having been brought to Ceylon from China
in the 184os. This stimulated two 'Letters to the Editor', both of the
highest relevance to our story. Here is Mr Gepp's, slightly abbreviated. It is dated from High Easter Vicarage, in Essex, the day after
the notice had appeared in The Times:
`Sir,
'I have read with much interest the article in "The Times" of August
i8th on the Ceylon Court of the Indian Exhibition in which it is stated:
"Tradition says that tea was introduced into Ceylon by the Dutch during
their occupation of the island, but we only know for certain that the first
plants were brought from China somewhere in the 'forties". This latter
statement is quite correct. I was residing in Ceylon during the years
1842 to 1845 and it was in the early part of the year 1843 when I was
living at Newera Ellia [sic] with my pupils (one of whom was Mr Laurence
Oliphant) that I cleared about half an acre of jungle land at the back of
Sir A. Oliphant's house for the reception of a score or so of tea plants
which had been forwarded from China to the Botanic Gardens at
Peradeniya by way of experiment.
1 The term applied to the descendants of those in the service of the Dutch East
India Company who stayed on in Ceylon. Others of European descent are also
referred to as Burghers
51

'The directors, fearing that the temperature of Kandy would prove
to be too hot for the plants, sent them up to me and I think that I may
fairly claim to be the first tea-planter in Ceylon. The site which I
selected was at an elevation of about 6,300 feet. The trees were flourishing when I left the island in 1845 and I heard of their welfare some few
years afterwards, but whether or not they are in existence at the present
time I cannot tell. At any rate the experiment was successful as proving
not only that the soil of Ceylon was congenial to this plant, but also that
it would flourish at an elevation 5o per cent higher than the extreme
limit of the growth of the coffee plant.'
The notable point here is of course that, according to Mr Gepp,
Nuwara Eliya was chosen under the definite impression that Assam
tea would not flourish in the temperature of Kandy (about the same
as much of Assam). How long the 3o plants continued to thrive we
do not know. A further tradition that some of them at least were
planted on what later became Naseby Estate should also be mentioned
here.
The other letter to The Times was this:
'Sir,
'As it would appear from the article on Ceylon in "The Times" of
yesterday that some uncertainty exists as to the exact date of the introduction of tea into that island, permit me to supply the following
authentic information. My late uncle Mr Maurice B. Worms brought
the first tea plants from China to Ceylon in September 1841, and formed
a nursery of them on his estate at Pusellawa (vide Sir J. Emerson Tennent's "Ceylon", Vol. 2, Chapter 7). Samples of the tea grown there
were often sent by Mr M. B. Worms to friends in England and found
to be excellent. Owing, however, to the objection to the importation of
Chinese labour and to the then ignorance of the Cingalese as to the art
of preparing tea, its cultivation remained for many years in abeyance.
The extent to which it has latterly developed your article admirably
describes.
GEORGE DE WORMS
Milton Park, Egham. August 19th, 1886'

A significant signature! Because this letter leads us straight to the
first instance of tea being actually manufactured in Ceylon, though
not on a practical scale. In the pioneering days of coffee as well as
tea, the names of the Worms brothers, Gabriel and Maurice B.,
constantly crop up. They were German Jews from Frankfurt-amMain, their mother being the eldest sister of Baron de Rothschild,
and they planted on several estates besides the one in Pussellawa,
52

which they had named after their distinguished relatives.' In 1841
Maurice went on a voyage to China and brought back a number of
cuttings at least that is how they were described, though unless
someone had anticipated the Vegetative Propagation process by 85
years, they are more likely to have been rooted seedlings. They were
China jat of course, and were duly planted out on Rothschild. A field
on Condegalla (now a Division of Labookellie Estate) was also planted with China tea seed, and it was stated as recently as 1954 that
some remains of this China clearing 'could still be seen by travellers
using the Ramboda Pass route to Nuwara Eliya'.
It was on Condegalla that the retired Assam planter, W. J. Jenkins,
carried out his first experiments in manufacture which, as we shall
see, James Taylor so proudly claimed to surpass, but Rothschild
appears to have been the scene of the Worms brothers' own pioneering in the production of made tea. It was there that Emerson Tennent
saw their bushes 'in full bloom' and recorded the fact in his book.
According to an endlessly repeated legend (as dim as the origins of
China tea itself), they brought a Chinese worker over to help them
and the result was a batch of tea which cost them a guinea (some
versions prefer 5) per lb. to produce. Tea is la Rothschild, truly!
Shaken, it seems, by this experience, the Worms brothers concentrated thereafter on their highly successful output of coffee.
From 1840 to 1866-7, the records of tea experiments in Ceylon
are somewhat scanty, but the trail can be picked up here and there.
For example, the Worms influence seems to have extended as far as
Uva, for long afterwards2 we find James Irvine claiming that 'on
Kottagodde Estate I cultivated for many years a small piece of tea
planted by Mr Bartlin from the same China seed introduced by Mr
Worms on Rothschild estate'. Irvine goes on to say that though no tea
was ever made from it, it was 'regularly pruned and flushed freely';
he adds an interesting suggestion that 'besides these there were many
isolated patches of tea in Uva, all of which grew freely'.
A very early instance of a tea bush (or bushes) being imported
direct from China in a Wardian case has been kindly communicated
1 According to Ferguson's account, this was done at the Rothschilds' request.
The two families were certainly in touch, as is shown by a letter which I have seen
through the kindness of Mr Edmund de.Rothschild and Baron Charles de Worms
(great-grandson of an elder brother of Gabriel and Maurice, who became a Baron of
the Austrian Empire and assumed the particle). This was written by Maurice to
the House of Rothschild and was evidently the second of two letters describing the
landscape and products of Manila, which he had visited on his way to China the
previous year.
The writer of the letter to The Times, by the way, was the and Baron de Worms.
' Tropical Agriculturist, 1886-7.
53
to me by Mr D. L. Armitage, a member of the old Ceylon planting

and agency house family. A scrap of paper which has come down to
him attributes this to John Jumeaux of Grandpass, Colombo, father
of Louis Jumeaux the Judge, and father-in-law of Mr Armitage's
great-grandfather, John. As the `Wardian case' for transporting
plants (a glass container with a little soil in it) was not developed by
Dr N. B. Ward until about 183o and John Jumeaux died in 185o, the
episode must have taken place within that period.
Again, one has frequently read the unadorned statement that,
almost simultaneously with the Worms brothers, a Mr Llewellyn
(sometimes described as 'of Calcutta') 'introduced a selection of
Assam indigenous shrubs on Pen-y-lan Estate, Dolosbage'. I have
not been able to unearth any contemporary evidence for this, but
fortunately there is a sequel. In the course of a tour in 1885, A. M.
Ferguson tells us1 he visited 'Mr. Blackett's estate of Pen-y-lan'.
Here, he says:
'I saw some of the original tea trees, either indigenous or first-class
hybrid, grown by Mr Llewellyn nearly 40 years ago. A slip taken from
one of those trees about seven years ago is now itself a fine tall tree
which has yielded and is yielding abundance of seed. But in days not so
long gone by, so little appreciated was the enterprise which Mr Llewellyn
came so near to establish, that a good many of the fine old tea trees were
cut down and converted into rafters for buildings!'
How tantalising it is that mysterious 'came so near to establish! . . .'

Then, some years after Mr Llewellyn's 'near miss' the new product
was given a trial on what is now North Punduluoya Estate (not far
from Condegalla, as it happens), where, according to an obscure
footnote in the Ceylon Directory for 1885, 'Mr P. D. Millie says he had
tea planted in 1861'.2 Observe, however, that when the Directories
begin to take independent note of tea acreages (round about 1875)
Punduluoya is shown as growing nothing but coffee, nor is there any
registered on Pen-y-lan until a good deal later, so evidently the fine
old seed-bearers there were (quite properly) excluded from the count.
That applies equally to some other very early tea in Dimbula and
Yakdessa. This was the subject of a highly circumstantial letter
written from Beaconsfield Estate, Maskeliya, in July 1879, which
seems to have got pigeon-holed in the office of the Tropical Agriculturist and to have been dug out rather apologetically in July 1883!
It appears over the signature 'J. D. W.' clearly J. D. Watson, who
i Tropical Agriculturist, June 5885.
3 In his own writings, unfortunately, Millie makes no mention of this.
54

had been a leading figure in Yakdessa earlier on. This is what he says,
and there is no reason to disbelieve him:
'I happen to know the oldest tea in Dimbula and Yakdessa, next door
to Windsor Forest. The oldest tea in Yakdessa is on old Nagastenne and
the oldest tea in Dimbula is on old Radella, Lindula. In both cases the
bushes must be over 3o years old [this would carry us back at least to
1850], and any one interested in the future of tea in Dimbula and Dolosbage would do well to visit the districts first before jumping at conclusions. They will then have an idea what Dimbula and Dolosbage may
be like 3o years hence. The Nagastenne tea is only about To minutes'
walk from Stow Easton bungalow, and the Radella tea on the roadside
going up to Upper Radella; in both cases growing on old abandoned
lands. I must say that the Radella bush is the finest, largest, oldest and
best that I have ever seen.
The last time I went to show a gentleman interested in tea the old
abandoned tea on Nagastenne in 1874, it was still in life, and what took
my fancy to it, when I first saw it in i870, was that it was flourishing, and
though it had been at one time surrounded by coffee, the coffee was
nowhere to be seen, but the tea had a sprinkling of seed on it, which I
got gathered and secured, and put into a nursery on Horagalla, and
which came up splendidly.'
Watson goes on to mention later nursery experiments on Seaforth,
which will be described in their proper place.
There was early planting, too, on Charles Shand's Barra Estate,
starting with a consignment of China jat seed sent over from Chittagong by 'an old coffee-planter Mr A. Grieg' in 1864. Eight acres of
land seem to have been planted out, but the tea was allowed to go
wild, and though a small sample was made in 1872 and received a
valuation of as. 4d. in London, serious cultivation did not start on
Barra until i881.
These are all most interesting bits and pieces, but there is still not
enough in them, one would think, to provide much of a market for
the seeds which Peradeniya announced it was in a position to supply
in 1861, 'should they be required for experiments in the cultivation
of this plant', and which were in fact sent out 'in considerable quantity' during the following year.
On the other hand, one should never overlook the very curious
reference in the story of Loolecondera itself to James Taylor practising the processes of tea manufacture in about 1866 on 'some old tea
bushes in my garden'.1 Does this suggest that perhaps more of the
1 The question arises, how old? Taylor did not build his Loolecondera bungalow
(apparently on a virgin site) until 1856, and he never mentions planting tea up to
the break in his correspondence at 186o.
55

primeval coffee-men than we now realise grew a few plants round
their bungalows and even plucked and consumed the proceeds, very
much as their descendants may drink home-grown coffee from a few
`pet' trees at the present day?
The most one can say is that the idea of tea-growing was certainly
in the air in Ceylon, though floating about rather thinly, from the
middle of the century onwards. There must have been many occasions like that day in 1864 when J. Mitchell of Kelburne Coffee
Estate, Haputale, pointed out to a fine expanse of forest land behind
Baker's Farml and said that if only he had the capital he would have
bought it with a view to opening a tea plantation; or when another
Visiting Agent, standing maybe on the heights of Moray, Dalhousie,
Forres or Strathspey, and speaking surely in a strong Scots accent,
declaimed 'Marrk my worrds if the slopes of Adam's Peak do not
before many years elapse present one of the finest expanses of tea
cultivation in the worrld'. Of course, he was right about Maskeliya
as a potential tea district, though his startling prophecy had to wait
a quarter of a century to be fulfilled!
In all this wishing and wondering about tea while coffee was still
in its full glory, Ceylon was only sharing in a world-wide movement of
interest and experiment. Apart from attempts, which go back to
Linnean times and which we need not treat too laboriously, to
naturalise a few tea bushes in such unfriendly territories as Sweden
(Uppsala), England (Syon House, Middlesex), France (Saumur) and
various parts of the United States, the slender foundations of many
successful ventures of the future had been laid by 185o. Japan and
Formosa, of course, were already well in the field, the former being
almost as venerable a tea country as China. African tea dates exactly
from mid-century, when there were experimental plantings in Natal
(now out of the tea picture); Trans-Caucasian tea from 1847 (Sukhum
Botanic Gardens on the Black Sea); South American from as early
as 1812 (Brazil). Even Australia emerged with trial plantings, but the
main deterrent there was the cost of labour the situation remains
the same in 1967.
However, none of these offered such natural propinquity and
attractive harbourage for the wandering tea plant as India's small but
fertile tropical neighbour, Ceylon.
1 This became in fact the later Mahagastotte Estate, now incorporated in Pedro
Group.
56
Chapter 4
THE LOOLECONDERA STORY
r 0 them, he was a god. 'I do not remember Mr Taylor, sir, myself, but my mother and father often spoke to me about him.
He was a very big man with a long beard. He weighed two
hundred and forty-six pounds, and one of his fingers was as thick as
this [three bunched together]. That was all he needed to knock a man
down. This building was his tea house, here was the entrance, and
here where the stream ran down on to the water wheel, which was
twenty feet high. As children we sometimes used to push the lever
which connected the water wheel to Mr Taylor's old roller, and made
it move to and fro. The roller was broken up long ago, and the wheel
too. His rickshaw, sir? How could a man as big as that go in a rickshaw, who could not go through a door? The labourers were in awe
of him and when he came near they stood like this [hands beneath
armpits], and they never spoke to him except through the Head
Kangani.
`My mother told me of his funeral. Twenty-four men carried him
into Kandy, two gangs of twelve taking turns every four miles. It was
about eighteen miles the way they went. They started in the morning
and got to Kandy at four o'clock in the afternoon. The Sinhalese
woman who kept his house came out of the bungalow crying and
waving her arms and would have gone with the funeral, but Mr
Gordon prevented her. The Kanganis and the labourers walked
behind the coffin. They called him sami dorai.'1
Such is the legend of James Taylor which survives at Loolecondera
today, as much a tangle of myth and history as if he had died a
thousand years ago instead of within the lifetime of today's octogenarians. And as he told it to me the voice of Iyasamy, driver all his
life of prosaic lorries and tractors, sank into a sort of respectful awe.
It is easier to understand this, after one has spent a few days in
Taylor's old environment. All tea estates are to a greater or less degree
self-contained. For example, the immobilisation of the Tamil workers, about which more will be said, has tended to keep each labour
force together as a single, inward-looking unit. Nobody joins it
(except new wives, but not new husbands!) and virtually nobody
1 Samiidorai the master who is god,
57

leaves. But whereas the average estate in, say, Dimbula or Dickoya,
is a solid little block, surrounded on every side by others so that you
are hardly conscious of passing from one to the next, Loolecondera
rambles for miles along its magnificent hillside, with its 'fields' often
divided by crag or forest or patna. It is, one feels, what tea-growing
in the Cairngorms would be if such a thing were possible, as compared with the Lowlands of Scotland. No better place for the transmutation of a prosaic Scots wheelwright's son into a rustic god!
The estate is much larger, as well as vastly more productive, than
it was in Taylor's time. It consists of four Divisions, each of which
was once a separate property Loolecondera itself; Waloya, which
Taylor managed for most of his life (he spelt it Wal Oya); Naranghena, where he started his planting career; and Gonavy which has
been added since. In all, 3,290 acres, of which just over half is now in
cultivation. The lowest part of the estate is about 2,400 ft above sealevel, the highest 4,50o. It would be hard to find a stonier place. On
some fields the tea seems to cling to great slabs and boulders of naked
rock, like the bones of the earth sticking out. Divine madness of the
old planters who fought their way into such limbos one man alone,
as often as not and then collected labour, marked out the ground,
burnt down the jungle, cleared away the wreckage (in itself a work for
giants), and set about planting up every square yard where a bush
could get a foothold!
Naturally the first objective of a visitor to Loolecondera is No. 7
field, where Taylor made his first clearing for tea in 1867. It is
grandly placed on a sunny slope at a point about half-way from the
factory to the Stellenburg Gap about which I have already written.
When I saw it towards the end of 1965 it was rather a jungly sight.
Taylor's original tea was there all right and the bushes, or rather
trees, looked strong and healthy, but the field, being rather remote
from the general plucking round, had been allowed to 'rest' for some
years.1 With the approach of the centenary, however, the owners of
Loolecondera, Messrs Anglo-Ceylon & General Estates, agreed to
bring it back into bearing and Plate 6 shows some Taylor bushes after
pruning in 1966. It has an enthusiastic custodian in Mr Roy Cameron,
the Superintendent of the estate, whose eager help and hospitality is
acknowledged in the Preface to this book.
To find the origins of all this we have to go back as far as 1851.
Mr Hubert Paterson reported on the field in 1955 as being excellent in appearance, and the bushes as having a fair cover. Yields of as much as 511 lb. per acre
were obtained in 192o-3o.
58

It was on i6 October of that year that a 16-year-old Scots boy walked
from his lodgings in Horseferry Road, Westminster, to an office in
Fenchurch Street (just round the corner from Mincing Lane) and
there signed the following letter of engagement:
Messrs G. & J. A. Hadden. London October t85x
Gentlemen,
I hereby engage myself to Mr George Pride of Kandy, Ceylon, for the
space of three years to act in the capacity of assistant superintendent and
to make myself generally useful and obey the orders of those set over
me at a salary of oo say a Hundred Pounds per annum to commence
from the time of my arrival on the estate and to have deducted from my
salary the amount of money advanced by you for my passage and outfit.
I am, Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
JAMES TAYLOR
Quite an oppressive moment, one would think, for a lad utterly

out of his element in a 'nasty, smokey hole' like London, where if you
went into the street you could hardly hear a person speaking unless
he cried in your ear, and any way you could scarcely know what he
was saying. This language difficulty, thought James, made him and
his cousin Henry Stiven who was with him, look rather awkward,
especially in their dealings with the Haddens, but he was not in the
least abashed. The form of agreement had, in fact, been presented to
him on the previous day, but he had calmly insisted on it being revised:
Ì objected that it was not particular enough, especially one great
mistake that it did not mention how long the engagement was to last,
namely, three years. We are to get a better one tomorrow.'
The terms even as signed sound fairly bleak, but they are strictly
in. line with what was thought appropriate in those days. From other
sources we learn that the recognised salary of an assistant in the early
185os was L8, 6s. 8d. a month for the first year, rising to Liz, ios. od.
in the third year, and on this a young man could reckon to save
money; moreover, in a decade or two later youngsters would be paying
loo a year, instead of receiving it, for the privileges of learning teaplanting a very hard way indeed.'
1 Sir Leybourne Davidson (Some Early Memories, reprinted from the Aberdeen
Press and Journal, 1933) says he started on Culloden Estate in 1876 at 66 per year.
As late as r882, advertisements were appearing in the London Times for Estate
Assistants at Liao the first year and ,Ci8o the second board and lodging free, but a
premium of oo required. Though over 400 replies were received, the Planters'
Gazette looked upon the offer with great suspicion 'premium-snatching'.
59
In any case, money was likely to be the last thing to concern the
signatory to the document, who a few days later boarded the sailingship Sydney bound for Ceylon. What he wanted to do was to get
away from home.
James Taylor was born on 29 March 1835, in a cottage called Moss
Park on the Monboddo estate, near Laurencekirk in Kincardineshire.
He was one of the six children of Michael Taylor, wheelwright, and
his wife Margaret. The Taylors were 'small' people small farmers,
small tradesmen and the like but Margaret Moir came of superior
stock and one of her uncles had risen to be Episcopalian Bishop of
Brechin. To James' great grief his mother died when he was only
nine, and in due course his father married again. There are indications
that James did not hit it off with his step-mother, but at least up to
1849 he had no thought of leaving home, because on r April of that
year he signed an Indenture (just eight times as long as the agreement
with the Haddens) to become a pupil teacher under his old schoolmaster David Souter. In after years Taylor was a bit critical of Souter's
teaching at the little Fordoun Free Church School (Moss Park was in
Fordoun Parish), though the breadth of knowledge and standard of
self-expression revealed by his own letters is far beyond anything
attained by most boys of his age today.
In the course of an immensely long and self-revealing letter from
Loolecondera (17 September 1857) he muses over his boyhood in a
touching way:
Ì'm glad Robert [a young brother] is getting on with his business.
From what I hear he seems to be rather a dull customer but company,
as he will have it, and work to keep his body active will very likely set his
mind a-going and he may end by being the most sensible and intelligent of us all. For if wise when young we soon feel ourselves so far
ahead of our companions that we have no inducement to push on
and get into an indolent habit that never leaves. I know I was as learned
at 14 as I am now, though I can now think with twice the force and
soon overcome difficulties, that would have baffled me then. That
pupil teachership was an unlucky thing for me, for I was able to stand
understand? two or three years of its requirements when first passed
and had nothing to do but amuse myself. . . . My time was so much
broken as D. Souter had no system, that if I was studying anything
I was sure to be called away unexpectedly to some job . . . and eventually
I did nothing but any light thing that was amusing and required little
continuance of attention. D. Souter was a good man, but a slow and far
from an able man. . .
6o

At what point Taylor decided to break away from what seemed
like a natural destiny we do not know, but in any case the means of
escape were close at hand. His cousin Peter Moir was home on leave
after six years in Ceylon, and had already got into touch with Henry
Stiven. One day James went over to Fettercairn, a few miles away,
and he and Henry had a talk. ,
At this juncture we receive an unexpected ally in research. In the
year 1911 there was published a truly remarkable work of reference:
A List of Inscriptions on Tombstones and Monuments in Ceylon of
Historical or Local Interest, with an Obituary of People Uncommemorated, by J. Penry Lewis, C.M.G. (Ceylon Civil Service retd.).' It is
rather scarce, but those who own it treasure it. And rightly, because
it is an unmatched storehouse not only of inscriptions which already
in Lewis' day were crumbling into dust, but of ample annotation
about the men and women whose memories are passing the same way.
We shall call upon it again, but our gratitude just now is for Lewis'
note on James Francis Blacklaw (buried in the Garrison Cemetery
Kandy) in the course of which he quotes from an article written by
another brother, Hugh, in the Times of Ceylon during 1907. Explaining how he himself got to Ceylon, Hugh recalled:
'The late Mr Peter Moir, who came from the same place as I did,
had come out to Ceylon in 1843. He was manager of Messrs Hadden's
properties out here, and enticed a lot of young people from our small
town to come out. It was through his influence that my brothers and I
came to Ceylon. It is a very small town, ours. It is St Laurencekirk,2
Kincardineshire, with a population of about 2,000 souls, yet at one time
there were as many as fourteen St Laurencekirk men in Ceylon. There
were my four brothers and I, the four Moirs, James Taylor of Golconda,
pioneer of tea and cinchona, Robertson, father of Robertson of the
G.P.O., Petrie, the two Bissets3 and Stiven of Ancoombra, Matale West,
who afterwards went to Kandanuwara and died at the Galle Face Hotel
in 1868.'
'Taylor', of course, is our James; 'Golconda' is Loolecondera
under a heavier disguise than usual! This picture of Peter Moir acting
as recruiting sergeant for the tea estates (shades of the Malabar coast)
is in tune with the times. Already the primeval 'roughnecks' were
being eliminated and the 'gentleman planter' was still to come; now
Colombo, Government Record Office, 1913.
The prefix 'St' was dropped in very early times. To say that all 14 came 'from
Laurencekirk' is rather loose, since only Blacklaw's own family and the Stivens
seem to have been identified with the little town itself the rest lived round about.
3 Later there were three. See page 96.
I
6i

sensible proprietors were looking to Scotland's 'trustworthy and
industrious sons of toil' gardeners chiefly for their young entry.
As the Haddens drew upon Laurencekirk, so the old agency house
of Acland & Boyd brought out 'relays of young men, principally from
the neighbourhood of Crimond'.
There was, of course, a link between the two Haddens ('an old man
and a young man' never named) whom Taylor met in Fenchurch
Street, and the planting Haddens in Ceylon. The whole family
originally came from Aberdeen (several were Provosts) and the planting branch started with two brothers, Frederick J. and Alexander,
and their cousin Charles.' They were successful planters in the Hunasgiriya district from about 184o onwards, but Frederick came home
for good in 185o and Charles in 185z, leaving the Moirs in charge.
Later planting members of the family were Fred and Frank, sons of
Frederick.
So James Taylor and Henry Stiven were following a well-mapped
route from Laurencekirk to Colombo. But while they are still on their
four months' voyage, and James is keeping a log in exquisitely small
script, we must have a last look at that homely environment which
he never saw again but which he passionately remembered as though
he had left it yesterday 'every cut in the road, and every large stone
and all the blue hills and knowes'.
Laurencekirk . . . Fordoun . . Monboddo townlet, hamlet and
estate the little nest of names huddles close together even on a largescale map. Though they lie in a broad, green valley, the land rises
fairly abruptly on both sides, and as Taylor so often noted, suggests
many parallels with Loolecondera's hills. The Taylor family seem to
have left Moss Park in the early 187os, and from a letter of 25 January
1873, one had naturally assumed that James' birthplace no longer
existed:
'And so the old houses are being demolished and the home I came
from being obliterated. Well, of course, changes must go on and
improvements. . . . Is the whole lot, old shop and all, coming down?
After you leave the place it will not be worth my while going to see
the old locality, except to look at the old outline of the hills. .
However, with the help of Mr R. S. M. Milne, who now owns most
of the Monboddo property, the photograph which appears in Plate
1 Son, it would seem, of Alexander, one of the three founders of the firm which
engaged James Taylor and which later became James A. Hadden & Co. These
Fenchurch Street Haddens had a romantic start in life during the Napoleonic
Wars.
62

sb was quickly identified with a little range of buildings still standing
by itself in the fields, though much ruined and used only for farm
purposes. It is rather moving to stand (or rather crouch) in the tiny
low-roofed rooms where so many brawny young Taylors were reared,
and to poke about in the adjoining byre where no doubt the wheelwright father had his 'shop'.1
Monboddo House itself is also somewhat desolate. One turret,
however, still bears the Douglas coat-of-arms which James Burnett,
Lord Monboddo, showed to Dr Johnson in 1773. There was a time
when I hoped to find a family connection between James Taylor and
this celebrated anticipator of Darwin (Lord Monboddo believed that
men once had tails), since there are two Taylor marriages in the
Burnett pedigree. But this has had to be abandoned; Taylor must
stand on his own sturdy Scots feet and an impressive figure he
makes, even at 16. Souter left a description of him as a 'quiet, steadygoing lad with prominent eyes and eyebrows', while to a neighbour
called Morrison, who saw him on the Fettercairn visit, he was a 'bigheaded, large-chested burly lad, looking the picture of health'. Both,
one feels, were just right about the boy who was later to become
Ceylon's most scientific planter and also the P.D. who could knock
a man down with one finger!
The two cousins arrived at Colombo on zo February 1852. They
were kindly looked after by the Mackwood family and left a few days
later for Kandy Ca fine ride through fearful scenery'), after which
Stiven diverged to Ancoombra and Taylor made for Mr Pride's
Narenghena estate.
He was not very lucky in his first boss. On 1 March he began the
series of lengthy and detailed letters2 to his father which contain
perhaps the most complete account in existence of a young planter's
experiences and feelings, but from which, alas, we have room only
for the merest snippets. In this first letter he describes Pride as a
fine fellow and as having the largest coffee business of any in the
island (doubtful). But, within a few months he was seeing him much
more clearly as a little fellow who in his passions was fearful and who
had no control of them 'there he stands thumping his foot on the
ground and cursing'. One day he thumps a coolie for nearly half an
1 Messrs Burnett & Reid, of Aberdeen, late factors to the Monboddo Estate, have
kindly let me see the rent roll for 1872. Moss Park is entered at 9 a year much
above what was normally paid by cottagers. The existence of the 'shop' may have
accounted for the rent. The Moss Park croft does not now form part of the Monboddo Estate and belongs to Mr C. Cromar.
For the lamentable 1861-9 gap in the correspondence, see Preface.
63

hour, another time while paying the workers in front of the bungalow
he picks up James' tumbler and throws it at them it whizzes between
their heads and is smashed, but poor James doesn't get a new one.
And always he is giving contrary orders at an awful rate and flying
about like a madman. No wonder the other assistant, Mr Hoffman,
is already looking for another place after only two months.
Taylor himself only stayed on Narenghena about six weeks before
being sent to Loolecondera next door. There he settled down in a
temporary bungalow with Hoffman, a Portuguese and 'a quiet sort of
gentleman' who had been born and lived all his life in Calcutta. Even
by the current standards their little home was a rough job:
`. . . constructed of a few posts about the corners with boards nailed
across, overlapping each other like slates, as open as well as can be, with
about a foot of opening above between that and the thatch. .. . Whenever
the light is out at night a flock of rats from the jungle beside us come in
looking out for something to eat; and then the wind, of which we have
plenty at this season of the year, blows a perfect hurricane in the
bungalow, sometimes so as to put out the lamp. This is the rainy season
with us and cold too, I wonder how the naked fellows of coolies can
stand it all. . .
Strange environment for the boy from Monboddo and his Portuguese friend, with the rats and the roaring hurricane for company at
night, and by day an equally wild environment to wrestle with and
tame! Loolecondera was, of course, a coffee estate in embryo, having
been acquired from the Crown for the purpose by a Mr J. J. Mackenzie in 1841. But it seems to have remained virtually undeveloped. All
Taylor speaks of as having been done before he arrived was the cutting down and burning of the timber; his job now was to get roads
made and the ground 'holed' for planting. With the help of zoo
labourers a quarter of the estate had been dealt with by mid-June,
and within a year Loolecondera was in business.
This is not a book about coffee-planting as such. What interests
us here, as at Fordoun School, is Taylor's consciousness of powers
not fully used. He was a natural technician. He sometimes spent more
time and money than his proprietors liked, but his roads were the best
in the district and, when finished, cost nothing for two years 'except
5s. for a cross-drain'. His thatching, too, was good for five years
against the normal three. 'It is the same with all my work it lasts
forever.' But this was not enough he would have liked to make a
career out of everything he undertook! He taught himself how to save
64

his employer money by measuring land and dreamt of becoming a surveyor (very profitable in Ceylon); he put up all the machinery at
Loolecondera and later at Waloya, and thought that maybe he could
get something 'in the civil engineer line' if he came home; he saw other
estates being muddled about, and he knew with absolute conviction
that given the chance he could make them pay more handsomely than
Loolecondera, with its cold climate and poorish, rocky soil. These
dreams came to nothing James Taylor's never-resting mind found
its outlet not in new jobs but in new products.
His chance came when the estate changed hands. On 18 June 1857
he wrote home with some surprising news: 'My old master George
Pride is dead'. This happened while Pride was in England it must
be confessed at a rather opportune moment; James had just built
himself a proper bungalow and spent (as usual) rather more on it than
he had been allowed, so he was expecting a row. Pride's brother
Thom came out to take over and after much haggling the estates were
sold to the firm of Keir, Dundas & Co., the leading agency house in
Kandy after George Wall's. The two principal men in it were J. L.
Dundas and John Gavin. Taylor thought nothing of the former 'a
senseless, foppish fellow . . . a lazy useless bummy', but Gavin was
another story. Taylor calls him 'the business man of the lot and
perhaps the most important man in all the Kandyan country except
Tytler'. He was certainly a driving and imaginative character, whom
we shall meet again over Planters' Association affairs. More significant, he was not coffee-bound. He was interested in the idea of
diversification cotton-growing in the Southern Province for
example. Gavin retired in 1862, but he passed on the message to the
two men who took over from him, D. G. B. Harrison and Martin
Leake.
Harrison and Leake great names in the history of Ceylon tea.
They had started out as irrigation engineers and it was this that
brought them into touch with Gavin. Harrison made the bigger
`splash' at first (he was known as 'the King of Kandy'), but it is
Leake's name which has been immortalised, and in a rather quaint
manner. After several years as Secretary and then as Chairman of
the Planters' Association, he went home and became the first Secretary of the Ceylon Association, London, and the telegraphic address
of that body is LEAKE to this day.
Cinchona provided the first breakthrough. It is a 'chicken-and-egg'
question whether the initiative came from Taylor or from his new
employers. Towards the end of his life the former used a firm but
E
65

rather curious phrase about it. After saying that the credit for starting
the tea industry of Ceylon belonged to Messrs Harrison and Leake,
he goes on, 'It was they who allowed me to plant cinchona and ordered
me to plant tea and it was they who paid for these things and stood
the risk of failure'. Martin Leake's version did not make the same
distinction. During the discussion that followed a lecture on the
Ceylon Tea Industry, given to the Royal Colonial Institute on to
January 1888 by J. L. Shand, he said of James Taylor:
`He is a man who, of all whom I have known, is the most entirely
devoted to his work. Self-advancement has been, I believe, as nothing
in his eyes. He has cared for his work, and for that only. Here lies the
root of the wonderful success attained. I would add that though Loolecondera had been selected as the estate most suitable for cinchona
cultivation, it was not so in the case of tea. Mr Taylor had shown what
he was capable of in the matter of the cinchona. And it was, therefore,
without hesitation that we entrusted the tea experiment to his care.'
However that may be, we shall see in the next chapter how Taylor
became thoroughly involved over cinchona with the Royal Botanic
Gardens, Peradeniya, and it was from there that he also got his first
tea seed. At this point we must formally introduce the personality of
George Henry Kenrick Thwaites. If one takes a sober look at the
record, it is he who really deserves the most conspicuous place on that
bronze tablet which at the headquarters of the Planters' Association,
Colombo, commemorates the three pioneers of the plantation industries: GEORGE BIRD (Coffee), JAMES TAYLOR (Tea), and HENRY
WICKHAM (Rubber). I want this book to do him justice.
Born at Bristol in 1811, he became at a very early age a lecturer in
Botany in his native city. 'An acute observer and an expert microscopist', says the Dictionary of National Biography, he was so far
ahead of his time that 'many of his discoveries were overlooked and
subsequently attributed to foreign observers'. He was appointed
Superintendent at Peradeniya in 1849, his title being changed to
Director in 1857. From then onwards Thwaites (again according to
the D.N.B.) 'became more and more engrossed by the less congenial
duties of investigating the application of botany to tropical agriculture'. Less congenial? His achievements read much more like a
labour of love!
For over twenty years, Thwaites was in fact a pivotal figure in the
fight against the coffee disease and in the development in turn of
cinchona and tea. Whatever the problem, everyone turned as a
66

matter of course to the modest little man who got quite cross when
referred to as Dr instead of Mr Thwaites,1 though his honours were
many (F.R.S. 1865, C.M.G. 1878).
When Sir William Gregory came to Ceylon as Governor (1871)
he found himself, in no time at all, being entertained to tea and bread
and butter at Thwaites' bungalow. Gregory's wonderfully readable
autobiography (edited after his death by his widow Augusta, the
intrepid foundress of the Dublin Abbey Theatre and friend of W. B.
Yeats) records some of Thwaites' foibles as well as his almost prophetic powers in his own field. For example, he had a mysterious
tendresse for what Gregory calls the 'pestilent flying foxes' (fruiteating bats) and allowed a large and stinking tribe of them to infest
Peradeniya. No one was permitted to touch them until, in a happy
hour, quite a large number were murdered by Albert Edward Prince
of Wales, after which the spell seems to have been broken.2
In 1879, with exactly 3o years' work at Peradeniya behind him,
Thwaites retired to the bungalow called Fairieland at Kandy. He was
made the first Life Member of the Planters' Association (17 February
188o) and died in 1882.
Such was the man from whom James Taylor obtained his first
tea seed sometime in the early 186os. The part which Peradeniya
played in promoting experiments in tea just before the outbreak of
coffee disease must remain to be fully elucidated, but we have already
seen that seed was sent out to planters in 1861 and 1862, and that this
was likely to have included some Assam Indigenous, descended from
the Wallich importations of 1839-4o. After that there is a gap in our
information, but if the Botanic Gardens' interest did lapse it can only
have done so briefly, since from 1866 onwards there are unbroken
references to tea-growing and seed-distribution at both Peradeniya
itself and at the Hakgalla Gardens near Nuwara Eliya.3
In spite of the early start made with Assam jat, there are several
1 In writing to Joseph Hooker on the subject on r5 December 1864, he is perhaps
covering up this genuine motive of modesty:
'I don't want to be called "Doctor" as there is already a Dr Thwaites here, and I
hope my German friends will not be offended at my calling myself Mr Thwaites, with
Ph.D. after my name on occasions.'
The reference here is to J. Thwaites, M.D., of Gampola, doyen of Ceylon doctors,
who died in 1876 after 45 years in the island.
A,substantial colony may, however, still be seen hanging from trees in the
Gardens. They fill the air with their whistling by day, and at nightfall with their
wings.
H. C. Cruw11, reporting to the Planters' Association in 1865 on a visit to Java,
says that the tea there was not 'nearly as fine' as he saw at Hakgalla, and he thought
the crop should certainly be tried in Ceylon.
67

reasons for thinking that up to 1866 the main concern was with
China:
(a) Thwaites' own recommendations to Government had stressed
the planting of 'China Bohea'.
(b) Special attention was drawn to the fact that the Hakgalla sped
bearers included 'a few of the Assam variety'.
(c) We know of at least one outstanding recipient who did receive
China seeds and that was James Taylor, who set out the plants along
the roads and paths of his estate, where they may be seen to this day.
But, now all the feelers were in the other direction. It was in his
Administrative Report for the year ended August 1866 that Thwaites
announced that as 'the disposition among the planters to attempt
the cultivation of tea has become more decided', an experienced
planter was to proceed 'under the auspices of the Government and
on a mission from the Planters' Association' to report upon tea
production as carried on in India. This ushers in the Morice Mission,
one of the landmarks in the development of the Ceylon tea industry,
though hardly recognised as such at that time.
Arthur Morice, Superintendent on Mooloya, was a neighbour of
Taylor's and like him a scientific planter. He was also a travelled man
I have seen an excellent letter from him to Arthur Hunter, dated
16 September 1865, giving his impression of an Australasian tour.
The matter seems to have first come up as early as the end of 1865 at any rate it was far enough advanced for the Planters' Association
annual general meeting of 17 February 1866, to appoint a Committee
to 'correspond with the Government' about the Mission. Morice was
on the committee, which also included Harrison, Leake and 'Sandy'
Brown; he was made responsible for finding out how much a four
months' trip would cost and generally helped to stage-manage the
whole scheme. The job was advertised with a guarantee of not less
than q.00 to cover expenses, and by the closing date (io October
1866) ten applications had been received. They included James
Taylor, but he was not short-listed. The final four names to go before
the Committee were Messrs Imlah, Webster, Williams and Morice.
A lot of proxies were sent in, all but one in favour of Morice, and on
26 October he was duly appointed as was surely intended from the
start!
Meanwhile Government had agreed to put up Lzso of the money
and Thwaites had set about writing a 'paper of suggestions'. This
was composed under 15 headings, covering every imaginable aspect
68

of tea-growing, though he asked that paragraphs 1 r, 12 and 13 of the
brief (Management, Labour, and Buildings and Plant) should be
supplied by an experienced planter. They were assigned to J. Neintner
of Fernlands Estate, Pundaluoya, who had himself gone on a study
tour of the Assam tea country as far back as 1852-3. Thwaites had
laid particular stress on the question of climate and Neintner added
a personal footnote to this - he had seen the hardy tea plant under
snow at Almorah (5,400 ft up in the Himalayas), as thriving as in the
steamy plains of Assam.'
We do not know exactly when Morice set off, though in writing on
zo November to ask the Colonial Secretary to produce the Government's promised cash, Martin Leake mentioned that `Mr Morice will
leave Galle for Calcutta by the P. and 0. steamer at the beginning of
next month'. He was away till April 1867 and we have his own word
for it that the tour covered Assam, Dehra Dun, the Kangra Valley,
the Madras Presidency, Coorg and the Nilgiris - a journey of at least
3,000 miles.
His report was long and painstaking, and since it is far more often
mentioned than read, I have included a summary in Appendix I.
Briefly, he thought the soil and climate of Ceylon to be sufficiently
like that of the Indian tea lands to allow the production of regular
and remunerative crops. He also considered that it would be easier
to cope with weeds than in grass-ridden Assam; that shorter hauls to
the coast would help to give Ceylon the 'edge' on costs, and that tea
would be a useful auxiliary crop to coffee because it would occupy
the labour force in the non-crop season. On two points he laid
particular stress:
(a) That the seed used must be the best Assam of the hybrid
variety.
(b) That Ceylon should concentrate on high-grown tea and turn
out only the superior grades.
He followed interesting byways too - some shrewd, some eccentric.
For instance, he was convinced that tea could be propagated both
from cuttings and from 'pieces of root torn off and buried a few inches
Neintner also dropped a sardonic hint to the Commissioner: 'In his inquiries
as tq the profits to be derived from this scheme, let him be careful to distinguish
between the money that has been made in Assam by Estate jobbing and by bonafide tea planting. This was not lost on Morice - see the final section of his report
(page 280)1 Neintner was a young gardener at Potsdam before he came out to
Ceylon. There is a touching reference to him, and to a copy of Flora Zeylanica given
him by Thwaites, in Haeckel's A Visit to Ceylon (London, Kegan Paul, Trench, 2
vols., x883), chapter VII.
69

in the ground', and he thought it would be a good idea to produce
Brick Tea, especially for Australia, where loose tea had to be carried
miles into the bush in bulky China boxes.
Even allowing for the briskness with which such projects were
conceived and carried out in the Victorian period as compared with
today, it seems remarkable that the journey should have been completed, the elaborate report written and published (it bears the imprint
1867), the first seed ordered and received from Calcutta and handed
over to Taylor for sowing at Loolecondera all in the same year, but
that is what the evidence says. Martin Leake, though writing long
afterwards (September 188$), is quite clear that it was '19 years ago'
(i.e. 1866) that he was active in promoting the idea of a Mission and
that in the following year (1867) he obtained the seed' and committed
it to the care of 'that watchful nurse, Mr James Taylor'. Thwaites'
reports are less specific but also leave little room for manoeuvre. He,
like Leake, wrote to India for Assam Hybrid seeds in 1867, though he
was still waiting for their arrival from the Calcutta Botanic Gardens
('by direction of the Indian Government') in 1868.
It must have been this consignment which is represented today by
one of the most curious features of Peradeniya a scattered group of
some 3o tea bushes (definitely non-China fat) still growing rather
leggily on a lawn and under huge trees in the centre of the Gardens.
The area they cover suggests the remnant of a considerable nursery.
Thwaites also records the receipt of some Assam plants from Dr
Anderson in a Wardian case; these (along with some seed) were sent
to Hakgalla, 'where they quickly revived from their weak appearance'.
Whatever gaps there may still be in our chronology, it is now
reasonably established that 1867 was the year in which Taylor, in his
own words 'felled and meant to plant', though the first sowing of seed
was unsatisfactory and they had to get more next season. So I am
afraid that the bronze plaque to which we have already referred is in
error when it states that it was in 1866 that James Taylor 'planted an
acreage of tea raised from Assam seed on Loolecondera Estate, thus
leading to the development of Ceylon's tea-producing industry'. A
well-deserved tribute, none the less!
The clearing was on a commercial scale 19 acres and that in
itself differentiates it from all the desultory tea-planting recorded in
the previous chapter. But even so we would hardly be justified in
Harrison, in staking a claim to have been the tea-planting pioneer and to have
imported this seed himself, says it was got from Weinholt Bros., Calcutta.
70

paying extraordinary honours to Taylor in this centenary year if he
had not also successfully manufactured tea and sold it.
When Mr D. Morris, Assistant Director of Kew Gardens (who
visited Ceylon on several missions in the 18705) told the Royal
Colonial Institute that Taylor 'in his plodding, careful way worked
out unaided the details of tea manufacture', he was exaggerating, but
only slightly.
It is lucky that we have two sources of information for this crucial
period the letters resume about 1869 and Taylor wrote a full-length
account of the whole affair when the Planters' Association made their
presentation to him in 1891. It reveals a long process of trial and
error. Taylor starts by recalling how in his China phase a Cachar
(North India) planter, Mr Noble, showed him how to pluck, wither
and roll tea with a little leaf growing on those old bushes near his
bungalow. All the rolling was done by hand, and Noble also told him
about fermenting and panning and the rest of the process.'
Later, Taylor made a further batch under the direction of the old
Assam planter, W. J. Jenkins, whom we met earlier experimenting
on Condegalla for the Ceylon Company. A sample of this batch,
together with seven samples Taylor had made before, was sent to
Weinholt in Calcutta, one of whose reports dated 21 August 1872,
survives. Taylor says with justified pride, that while the Jenkinscontrolled sample was valued a little higher than his own singlehanded efforts, all but two of these were 'reported on as being better
than the Indian teas then being sold in Calcutta'. He adds, however, a
comment which reminds us of the ideal at which he was then aiming
and against which his samples were presumably being matched in
Calcutta namely China flavour:
'From this I saw that I had been making tea rightly enough, but as I
could not get it to taste like the China tea sold in the shops, I was always
varying my process and spoiling batches of tea.'
Up to this time, Taylor explains, all his tea-making had been with
'arrangements in the bungalow verandah'. As it happens we have
another witness for this, and the picture is a pleasant one. E. G.
Harding went out to Ceylon in 1869 and began his planting career on
1 In a letter of 1873 about his commercial tea-making, Taylor refers to these
experiments in a curious way as if they were some time in the remote past: 'I knew
pretty well how to make it before I had a lot of road sides planted with tea years
before we made the field . . . the first I made long ago was pretty nearly rank
poison'.
71

Great Valley a few miles from Loolecondera. He used to visit
Taylor on Sundays, to learn about tea:
`The factory was in the bungalow. The leaf was rolled on tables on the
verandah by hand, i.e. from wrists to elbow, while the firing was done
in chulas or clay stoves, over charcoal fires, with wire trays to hold the
leaf. The result was a delicious tea which we bought up locally at Rs. i So
per lb."
The whole scene in fact resembles extraordinarily those colour prints
of Chinese tea-making processes which were brought home to
Britain by merchants and sailors so profusely in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.
But such makeshift devices did not long satisfy our mastertechnician. By 1872 Taylor was busy on a new project a fully
equipped tea-house to his own design and 'quite different from the
India tea houses'. Does it still exist? Iyasamy's testimony about the
stream and the water-wheel is strongly in favour of the plain rectangular stone building (now the dhoby's house, Plate io) which he pointed
out to us; moreover, it is only a few minutes walk from the Loolecondera assistant's bungalow, almost certainly on the site of Taylor's
own. Taylor describes the tea-house as being fitted for an acreage of
about 5o or ioo acres of tea in full bearing, though he thought it might
do more. The most exciting thing of all about it was, of course, its
rolling machine, the first ever made in Ceylon. Taylor referred to it in
a letter of 18 March 1872, and makes some sage remarks about its
significance:
'I have a machine of my own invention being made in Kandy for
rolling the tea which I think will be successful. If so, we cannot help
making a profit on tea if it grows of fair quality in this country. The
picking or gathering the leaves and the rolling are the greatest expenses
in the production; the rolling costs nearly as much as the gathering.'
Taylor goes on to say that he believes that mechanical rolling has
been tried already in India but without success, and he himself had
attempted it several times before hitting on his present idea.
Whoever was building the machine in Kandy took his time, but by
January 1873 Taylor had been making tea with it 'for about a month'.
It would be fascinating to know what the machine was like, but all we
have is Iyasamy's childish memory of it moving 'to and fro' when he
connected it with the water-wheel. This suggests a cylinder travelling
1 W. H. Ukers, All About Tea (New York, Tea & Co ffee Trade Yournal, z vols.,
1935) Vol. I, page 197.
72

across a flat bed rather than the eccentrically revolving type which
came later. Such a machine, however, would not impart the twist to
the leaf which was so much prized and which was certainly present
in the samples of 1872. It does not appear that Taylor used any other
mechanical devices.
All this time, of course, Mr Jenkins had been hovering around and
before long he was putting up a tea-house on Condegalla. Taylor was
surprised to find it was a copy in all its working parts of his own, but
Mr Jenkins did not make such good tea in it!
'His fermenting, which I saw, was by ramming the roll as hard and
tight as possible into a box, a plan that I had tried at the beginning of
my experiments, but had long ago given up as a failure.'
Out in the field, Taylor was always willing to learn. About the time
that No. 7 had come into full bearing, yet another Assam planter
arrived. This was a Mr Baker, who showed him that he had not
pruned sufficiently, so he did it all over again. A good deal later must
have been a call from William Cameron (a famous theoretician of
whom we shall hear more) since he commented that Taylor's pruning
method was the same as that used on Mariawatte, famed for its
high yields; and Mariawatte was not planted with tea till about 1878.
Cameron provided Taylor with a new incentive:
'Mr Cameron started finer plucking than I had been doing and began
to top the sale lists, which I think we began to get about this time. .. . I
also took to weekly plucking and topped the sale lists for a time. That
finer plucking largely increased the selling price of the tea and still more
largely the selling price per acre. So I was greatly indebted to Mr
Cameron,' though I only met him casually two or three times about
Kandy and Gampola.'
Two points stand out here. One is the reference to 'sale lists'. There
were no auctions in Ceylon before 1883, though Ceylon tea had been
appearing in London and Melbourne sale catalogues since 1878 and
188o respectively. The Loolecondera mark first turns up in a Mincing
Lane market report in 1881, but Taylor may well have been shipping
for private sale a little before that. It has, in fact, been frequently
stated that 23 lb. of Loolecondera tea was sent to London in 1873
and was given a valuation of 3s. 9d. per lb. a mysterious episode
connected perhaps with the visit to Ceylon of a London broker called
1 Taylor acknowledged this in a practical way by being among the first of the
handful who subscribed to Cameron's memorial fund after his death in 1883. 'I
wish I had had the chance of learning more from him,' he said.
73

Brand, who is supposed to have been so impressed with Taylor's tea
that he made an offer for the whole crop. This came to nothing, and
we have Taylor's own testimony that at any rate up to the end of 1876
(letter of 5 November) he sold all his tea in Ceylon 'for well over twice
the price we could get for it in London and saved the expense of
sending it home'. Leake too records that they had no difficulty' in
selling their crop in the island and getting 'rattling good prices'.
The other matter is of more substance namely, Taylor's claim
that by finer (i.e. more selective) plucking he 'largely increased the
selling price of the tea and still more largely the selling price per
acre'. Here Ceylon's first tea grower put his finger on what can still
be a tender spot; in trying to improve your return, are you more
likely to achieve it by plucking finer and getting a better price, or by
plucking coarser and getting more leaf per acre? Modern taxation
methods might well have driven Ceylon growers towards the latter
solution, but they have so far avoided it; Taylor deliberately chose
the former, and as long as his example is followed, Ceylon tea will no
doubt flourish and lead the world!
It is worth adding that Taylor's preference for fine plucking is
confirmed and commended by at least one outside witness, an
anonymous correspondent quoted in the Ferguson compilation
Ceylon and Her Planting Enterprise.' But this was from a slightly
different angle. The writer was one of those, not uncommon in the
early days, who believed that the productivity of the tea bush could
easily be upset by 'over-plucking' on a scale that we would regard as
very mild today, and instanced Taylor in support:
`Mr Taylor of Loolecondera, than whom a more intelligent, practical
planter does not exist, contents himself with a very moderate yield; he
does not distress his bushes and he tops the market. My own conviction
is that he shows a larger profit per acre with his 35o lbs. than others do
with 600.'
Proud though he was of his successes, and fully aware of the hard
times which the coffee disease was already beginning to bring, Taylor
was curiously slow to extend his planting of tea. There were times
when he seems almost to have doubted whether it was going to be a
'good spec' in the long run. Writing despondently towards the end of
his life (letter of 23 October 1890) about his employers' pressure for
profits, he says that though Loolecondera had done well in its day,
at the moment it mainly consisted of bare red earth: 'Most of the tea,
' Colombo, Ferguson, 1885.
74

or all of it except our old original fields, is still only young and small
bushes that will give, say, half a crop in the coming year'. This does
not seem to fit too well with the various Directory entries, according to
which the tea area had, in fact, increased to ioo acres by 1875 and to
30o ten years' later. At that stage coffee had disappeared altogether
and cinchona shared the whole estate with tea. In 1893-4, just after
Taylor's death, a jump of 442 acres of tea against only t t z of cinchona
is recorded; by 1896-7 the planted area, 1,014 acres, is tea and nothing
else. On this estate, as all over central Ceylon, the revolution was
complete.
What Taylor really relished was experiment, and from that nothing
ever discouraged him. A letter of 1876 shows that in spite of past
failures (mostly because of weather) with nutmegs, cloves, vanilla
and cocoa, he was at the moment trying cinnamon, 'an old Ceylon
crop'; cardamoms, `with which we may make money'; and ipecacuanha, though it grew so slowly that it would be a 'terrible time before
we do much in that line'. With cinchona, of course, he had already
been strikingly successful, and we shall hear more of this in the next
chapter.
Taken as a whole, James Taylor's life followed a not unusual
pattern of youthful vitality and good cheer shading off later into
disillusionment. His letters up to 186o (when he was still only zs,
remember!) show him as interested in everything, and confident his
father will be too. At the beginning there is a lot about 'wild beasts' the elephants which haunt the forest above the estate but which he is
never lucky enough to see, the cobra which he nearly treads on and
which 'fizzes and shows its fork'. Whatever may have happened to
the vanilla and the cocoa, his flower garden is wonderful will his
father send him seeds everything grows there larkspurs, sweet
williams, bluebells, pansies, broom and 'finer dahlias than you will
ever see at home'. Plenty of youthful boasting of course; the bungalow
that he has designed is the envy of all the fellows round and he himself,
bless him, is the strongest man in the neighbourhood, 'European or
native', though there may be stronger elsewhere in Ceylon! We hear
all about his clothes too they have to be easy-fitting without
wallowing and his coats must have no tails, 'I'm not ashamed of my
backside'. There is even news from time to time of his beard he cuts
it off periodically, but mostly it is allowed to twist and twirl about as
it likes, unless he is going in to Kandy. Ah well, if only he had a wife!
But, he was never trained for ladies' society and, indeed, a white
woman with petticoats and talking his own language would frighten
75

him out of his wits! Maybe he should come home and propose to
Miss Taylor (whichever one that may have been).
When the letters resume in 1869 the tone has changed. He is
cautious about recommending other young men to come out and is
beginning to feel isolated among the 'swells' who are taking the place
of his own homely sort. His many applications for land to develop on
his own have failed.1 And, of course, as the coffee disease closes in he
sees nothing but wretchedness around him and bankruptcy for everyone ahead. Even so, in his kindly way he gives shelter for long periods
to men who have been ruined, however wearying this becomes after
a time.
Perhaps Taylor's happiest aspect in the later years is as a sort of
patriarch of tea. His own assistants included men who later became
famous planters in their own right. One of them was P. R. Shand,
who arrived just in time to take part in the second pruning of No. 7
Field, and good Scots names like Maitland, Tennant, Dunbar,
Campbell and Scott predominated! Neighbours were always dropping
in to learn the rudiments, and one of them has left us a glimpse of
James as host.
Though not a drinking man, he 'liked his glass', as our grannies
used to say, and on such occasions enjoyed sharing it with his visitors.
This had a somewhat uncosy effect on his domestic surroundings;
Taylor disapproved of the first beer that came out of the neck of a
bottle, so this was regularly discharged upon the floor, which at the
end of a hospitable day would be well aswim. This is perhaps the
moment to remind ourselves that James Taylor never married.
His strongest trait, beyond doubt, was his passionate attachment
to Loolecondera. He scarcely ever left the estate; there is comedy in
the perpetual attempts of the Planters' Association in Kandy to get
him on to committees and sub-committees,2 which he always turns
down on the plea of being 'too busy', though he makes up for this by
writing long and sensible letters about the matter in hand.
His first and only holiday out of Ceylon was not taken till 1874.
Even then, he did not risk emulating that fellow-Scot, George
Morrice of Ury, who on his sole visit to his native land caught a heavy
cold through parsimoniously refusing to take a cab in a rain storm,
1 He did for a short time have a half-share in Lover's Leap, Nuwara Eliya, as a
cinchona estate.
Elected to represent Hewaheta on the General Committee for 1866-7, points
out (13 February 1867) that he has not been able to attend any meetings, and
resigns. Invited to join sub-committees on Soil Analysis (see page 218) 1868 and
Hospitals 1872, excuses himself from both.
76

and hurried back to Ceylon within a fortnight.' No, James Taylor's
holiday was spent in Darjeeling studying teal
Since the Loolecondera story was to have an unhappy ending so
far as James Taylor was concerned, it is pleasing that almost at the
last moment he received recognition from his fellow-planters. For
some time one of their leaders, George Wall, had been urging a
testimonial to him and in April 1890 this was taken up officially by
the Planters' Association. Subscriptions rolled in, a notable contributor being Sir William Gregory, who while Governor of Ceylon
visited Loolecondera to see the tea and cinchona experiments. He
declared that 'many men had had monuments raised to them with less
desert than Mr Taylor', and added that he considered the Loolecondera tea so superior to any other that as long as he could obtain
it he never drank any other! A handsome silver tea-sett was ordered
out from London and a cheque for Rs. z867.11 represented the
balance of the testimonial fund. Taylor, as usual, shrank from a
public appearance, so the presentation was made by correspondence,
but at least this gave rise to his long and valuable letter about the
pioneer days, from which I have already quoted. All this took endless
time, and the cheque was finally sent in December 1891. By then the
shadows were closing in at Loolecondera.
On the ownership side there had been many changes and they
epitomise the stormy course of plantation finance in the 186os and
187os. The trouble began even before the coffee rust appeared on
the scene. Keir, Dundas & Co. (i.e. Messrs Harrison and Leake)
became heavily involved as the result of taking over properties on
which they had claims, during a comparatively minor panic in 1866;
there was a drastic reconstruction and a new company, Duncan,
Symons & Co., was set up to acquire most of their estates; then came
the crisis of the 187os and in dizzying sequence between 1873 and
1880 Duncan, Symons and its successors Duncan, Anderson & Co.,
and MacGregor & Co., followed Keir, Dundas into liquidation;
finally the assets (still highly important) passed to the great firm of
Whittall & Co., and the era of tea prosperity began.
1 Another George Morrice story is irresistible. The famous Governor, Sir
Hercules Robinson, visited his part of the country and George went to watch the
show. Somebody asked him whether he saw the Governor. 'Aye, the tall man riding
out in front."No, the Governor came almost last."Oh, then,' said George in deep
disappointment, 'I must have booed tae the wrong man.'
2 This is still in the possession of Miss Greig, custodian of her great-uncle's
letters, and it was quite a moment for the author to be given tea from it in September
1965. It bears the inscription 'To James Taylor, Loolecondera, in grateful appreciation of his successful efforts which laid the foundation of the Tea and Cinchona
Industries of Ceylon, 189f.
77

Loolecondera had been left partially outside these movements by
being sold in /873 to a group consisting of Messrs A. G. Milne,
Thomas Campbell and Simon Keir, the latter doubtless representing
the Keir, Dundas interest. The agents were, successively, MacGregor
& Co. and (from 1883) Whittall & Co., for whom Messrs A. G.
Milne & Co. were London correspondents, so in that way too the old
connection was kept up.
By 1885 both Milne and Keir were dead and the estate was sold to
the liquidator of the Oriental Bank Corporation. He, in turn, sold it
to the Oriental Estates Company, under whose ownership it was listed
until the Company finally emerged in 1897 as Anglo-Ceylon &
General Estates, proprietors of Loolecondera to this day.
Taylor, who did not differ from any other planter in being perennially suspicious of what 'they' were up to in London, took a specially
cynical view of the Oriental Bank people, but if he thought them
'ignorant' they probably found him cantankerous. Sometime early in
1892 (according to our only authority, a letter written after his death
by his neighbour on Naranghena, C. E. Bonner) they ordered him to
take six months' sick leave off the estate. He felt the firm were trying
to get rid of him, said his health was perfectly good and refused to go;
in consequence he was asked to resign. Almost immediately after this
he contracted dysentery and died within a few days, still on Loolecondera.
How his people mourned him and carried his body to Kandy in
procession we have already heard. His grave in Mahaiyawa Cemetery
is inscribed as follows:
'In pious memory of James Taylor, Loolecondera Estate, Ceylon, the
pioneer of the tea and cinchona enterprise, who died May 2, 1892, aged
57 years.'
No personal relics of James Taylor are left on the estate today. A
pair of rickshaw wheels which hang in the factory office are by legend
supposed to be his hence our question to Iyasamy quoted at the
beginning of this chapter, but some further talk with him convinced
us that they date from a later epoch, perhaps that of Taylor's successor, G. F. Deane. No. 7 field alone bears witness to the estate's most
famous superintendent.
This chapter must not end without a recognition that while Loolecondera was certainly the first estate with a solid record of tea-growing
78

and manufacture, it achieved this only by the shortest of short heads.
Remember W. J. Jenkins! However, his experimental plantings and
tea-makings on Condegalla and Hope hardly represented a commercial tea enterprise by his employers, the Ceylon Company, and they
did not carry out their first forest clearing for tea until a year later
than James Taylor. Made tea from these Ceylon Company properties
began to be retailed about the same time as Loolecondera's, and
though Thwaites tended to be a bit 'sniffy' about Condegalla as a tea
estate (ùnskilfully handled . . . the trees exposed to various drawbacks'), he considered the product equal to the best from Assam, and
a portent of great things to come in the Up-country.
The 186os were, in fact, exciting years in retrospect as well as for
the participants. But the planting world as a whole was as yet unmoved. When the Morice Report was brought before the Planters'
Association General Committee in 1867 it was dealt with in the
following manner rather gallantly quoted against itself by the
Association in its centenary volume:
Àmong subjects of less importance the Committee have to notice the
publication, in the course of the year, of the report of the Tea Districts
of India by the Commissioner of the Association, Mr Arthur Morice.'1
Only 18 months later Dr Thwaites got some disconcerting news
from a planter in remote Madulsima.
1 Morice
was, however, made an Honorary Member of the Association.
79
Chapter 5
THE COLLAPSE OF COFFEE WHAT NEXT?

Ìt is in no small measure due to Hemileia vastatrix that the British
are now a nation of tea drinkers.'
R. W. RAYNER, World Crops, 1960
the rise of tea in China, about which we were talking in
Chapter 3, the fall of coffee in Ceylon has become blurred with
legend. And less understandably, seeing that the myths have
grown up, not in 2,000 years but actually within the lifetime of some
of the people who have helped me with the writing of this book.
Since, however, we know from some famous experiments that
human beings manufacture their own instant myths about simple
things that happened to them only a few hours ago, it is not really
surprising that error on more complicated subjects should take root
and flourish in the collective mind with the tenacity of a healthy tea
bush.
The main misconceptions about what happened to coffee in Ceylon
are two:
(a) That the disaster which fell on it was an isolated incident which
could never be repeated under modern conditions of scientific control.
(b) That the plague descended overnight, as it were, and led to a
headlong eradication of coffee and its replacement by tea.
IKE
ta
The facts are that Hemileia vastatrix, or Coffee Rust, is to this day
one of the greatest of the unsubdued menaces which threaten tropical
agriculture; and it destroyed the coffee industry of Ceylon only by a
process of attrition lasting over a quarter of a century.
The range and aggressiveness of the disease were reviewed with
admirable thoroughness in a series of four articles in World Crops
(May-August 196o) by Mr R. W. Rayner, who has kindly given me
permission to draw on them, and also on an even more extended
treatment which he has prepared for future publication.
Hemileia vastatrix is a fungus, allied to various cereal rust fungi,
and it made its sensational debut at a time when few people realised
that the appearance of fungus on a plant was likely to be the cause
8o

and not the effect of disease. (Mr Rayner makes an interesting comparison with the belief that the famous Irish potato blight was caused
by the plant's tissue becoming waterlogged, and not the other way
round.) When it attacks a coffee plant the immediate symptoms are
yellowish-orange, powdery blotches on the lower surfaces of the
leaves. Defoliation inexorably follows; in one field experiment it was
found that 'for every leaf found to be rusted in June, there was one
leaf less in September'. In a severe attack a bush may lose its leaves
altogether, though this effect is not (as we shall see) necessarily
permanent. For the ordinary gardener, a convenient parallel in this
respect is Black Spot in roses, which may leave you with a naked
bloomless bush in September, but does not necessarily prevent it
burgeoning again next spring tiresome for the amateur, ruinous (if
unchecked) for the professional relying on an autumn crop of roses or coffee beans!
As with most fungi, moisture provides the greatest encouragement
for the disease. Hence no doubt the severity of its historic assault on
Ceylon. According to Mr Rayner, the original home of Hemileia
vastatrix was in Abyssinia and Uganda, and its spores may well have
been blown across to Ceylon from the Horn of Africa on the southwest monsoon, though recent research has questioned this. Hull'
quotes a curious report by the Superintendent of the Government
Cinchona Plantations in the Nilgiris, apropos of Hemileia vastatrix in
South India in 1871, that 'the disease at Hoolicul and Kartairy has
been observed for upwards of z6 years, but only developed to an
alarming extent within the last two years'. This may, however, be
merely confusion with rusts of different species on wild coffee, or with
other diseases on cultivated coffee such as 'red rust' due to the alga
Cephaleuros.
In any case, so far as Ceylon is concerned, the virulence of the
original outbreak suggests that the disease could not have been
endemic in the island before its first recorded appearance there. When
and where was that? All reports associate it with the Madulsima
District, that extreme eastern outpost of the planting country (not,
incidentally, where one would expect the south-west monsoon to
deposit its first load of spores), and with Galloola Estate in particular.
For chapter and verse, however, we must turn, as so often, to John
Ferguson. In Uva Revisited 2 (an account of the inauguration of Uva
province in 1886) he gives a first-hand account of long conversations
1 op. cit.
Colombo, reprint from the Ceylon Observer, Ferguson, 1886.
81

with Donald Reid, who after some years of working with the Worms
Brothers, became superintendent at Galloola (proprietor Keith
MacLellan) in 1864-5. Ferguson states quite specifically:
Ìt was here on Galloola early in 1869 that Reid first noticed the dusty
yellow leaves on his coffee. Sending a few in a letter to Mr MacLellan
he asked his opinion of what seemed to him a new and troublesome
enemy. The leaves were sent to the late Mr Thwaites of Peradeniya who
at once labelled the new visitant as positively dangerous a new fungus
which if left alone would assuredly spread to all the coffee in the country,
and he advised prompt measures in gathering and burning all affected
leaves.
`This was done on Galloola for some weeks until Mr Reid reported to
his proprietor that unless he was prepared to double his labour force
and keep his trees permanently stripped of leaves, it was useless trying
to keep down the enemy. How this fungus spread all over the country
after that is a matter of history.'
It was in the same year that specimens of the affected leaves first
reached England, sent by Dr Thwaites to his old friend, the Rev.
M. J. Berkeley. The latter was a well-known authority on fungi, and
can claim, along with another mycologist, C. E. Broome, the honour
of giving the brand-new pest its sinister and prophetic name, which
can be Englished as the Semi-Smooth Female Destroyer! (hemi-half:
/eia-smooth: vastatrix a destroyer or devastator). The description
relates to a characteristic of its spores.
FIGURE
3. Coffee Rust Fungus
Left: The 'semi-smooth' spores of

Hemileia vastatrix.
Right: Threads (highly magnified)
from which the spores develop.
(from a drawing by Berkeley in the

Gardeners' Chronicle, 1869)
8z
THE COLLAPSE OF COFFEE - WHAT NEXT?

Java was the next sufferer after Ceylon, a production of 6o,000
tons in 1876 being reduced to only 20,000 tons 15 years later; and
every coffee area in the Eastern Hemisphere has received a visitation
in turn. By now, in fact, Hemileia vastatrix has boxed the compass in a
most alarming way. Having set out from East Africa in the 186os, it
has arrived within the last few years at the Cameroons, and even more
recently Liberia, on the west coast. So far it has not invaded the great
coffee-growing countries of South America, but 'Latin Americans
have cause to look at this development with great disquiet for the
north-east trades blow down along the coast in this part of Africa and
then out across the Atlantic towards them'.
Must they merely wait? I have referred to the legend that Ceylon's
disaster was something which modern science would never allow to
happen today. Mr Rayner gives no countenance to this. In Central
America, he says, 'climatic conditions are such that the disease would
certainly sweep through many areas like fire'. For in fact no really
satisfactory means of combating a sudden and violent outbreak of
Hemileia vastatrix is yet known. Copper sprays are working quite well
in some countries where conditions do not specially favour the disease,
but the main hope seems to be in breeding resistant strains. The
Robusta coffees certainly stand up much better to Hemileia than the
more delicate Arabicas; which is one reason why the latter have to
such a large extent been superseded round the Indian Ocean basin.'
But now to resume Hemileia vastatrix's only too victorious career
in Ceylon. From the moment of its initial appearance the spread
seems to have been rapid. Within five years every coffee-growing
district in Ceylon had become affected and within ten the average
yield per acre had declined from 4.5 cwt. to z cwt. In 188o it was
made the subject of 'one of the earliest scientific investigations of a
plant disease' (Rayner), but though Marshall Ward produced a
brilliant analysis of the situation and condemned the 'blind, empirical
and haphazard experiments' which had been carried out, he could not
suggest a remedy.
The planters themselves, of course, had plenty of nostrums. Confusing cause and effect, as we have already noted, they attributed the
trouble in turn to faulty manuring, wrong pruning, climatic changes.2
1 The literature of the subject is immense. Mr Rayner mentions that a bibliography-compiled by Stevenson and Beam in 1953 contains nearly 1,000 items, and
more are being added every year.
2 At the Planters' Association A.G.M. in 1874 George Wall made the perverse
assertion that Hemileia was a pest which 'followed in the wake of grub . . . as a
vulture follows in the wake of the lion to devour the carcase'. His remedy - get rid
of grub!
83

'Spend zo an acre on manure if ][c) is not enough!' was the Napoleonic directive from one absentee planter to his superintendent. And
often, of course, it appeared that some alleged remedy the use of
carbolic acid dusting, for example had positively 'worked'.
Two veteran planters have separately assured me that from their
personal experience shade had something to do with it. Mr Hubert
Paterson says that on their family estate of Allagolla some of the
original coffee survived through being planted under Jak trees and
they drink it to this day; Mr L. M. W. Wilkins, who was born on
Somerset Estate in 188o and can remember seeing coffee turning
yellow and dying, says that the planters were warned about the
importance of shade by an eminent planter called Eliot from Coorg,
and he himself has seen in the jungle coffee trees a hundred years
old and more, grown up into huge trees and often laden with ripe
berries.
Even Thwaites himself, it seems to me, did not play by any means
the emphatic Cassandra role which has been attributed to him. He
wavered like everybody else. At one moment he is hinting to the
Planters' Association that they might get by if they 'take particular
care in the selection of healthy nursery plants'; at another he records
the pretty general belief that under good cultivation the loss occasioned by the disease 'is not nearly so serious as was at first feared
might be the case'; and then again he pins timid hopes on control
by a 'minute red maggot' which has been observed feeding on the
spores.
It was the baffling irregularity of the epidemic's progress, noted by
every contemporary observer, that encouraged these fallacious hopes
and helped to sustain the long rearguard action which was fought.
Sometimes the enemy appeared to retreat for several seasons together.
At one stage it was thought that the disease itself was diseased and
showing signs of welcome debility! On the Uva side in the mid-i88os
the 'yellow powder' distinctly lacked the quantity and quality of
earlier years, when it could be positively 'spooned' off the backs of
the leaves.
All this accounts for some truly pathetic outbursts of optimism.
One, from what should have been a well-informed source, is quoted
in the Baring Correspondence (Appendix II, page 284) and is dated
1879; another, even later, is perhaps the most striking. We have
already referred to Miss Gordon Cumming's admirable Two Happy
Years in Ceylon. It was in the 189os and looking back to zo years
earlier that she writes in the following astonishing strain:
84

'At that time (1870 King Coffee reigned supreme, and every available
foot of land was given up to this one culture, producing in most districts
an effect of great monotony. Since then it has passed through very evil
days, and in large districts has been wholly supplanted by tea and other
products; but it is pleasant to learn that in this district (Haputale),
where it was so pre-eminently luxuriant, a large proportion has recovered,
so that coffee once more holds a foremost place in the province of Uva.'
Later she is even more specific:
'Happily, on many estates, it was decided not at once to uproot diseased coffee, but give it a chance of recovery, while tea shrubs were
planted all over the ground; and well it is that this was done, as in many
cases . . . the leafless bushes, which were apparently dead, recovered as
if from a trance. . . . On a single branch, which in September 1890 was
cut as "a specimen" of the crop on the Albion estate, no less than 954
berries were counted. So there is now, once more, good hope for the
future of coffee. . .
Good hope, alas! However, it was not only the false recoveries of
the coffee that kept the dying industry in being; there were economic
causes as well.
One was that as the disease progressed, so the area under cultivation
increased, new ground being brought into use where it was hoped
and for a time it seemed that disease-free crops could be gathered.
This applied particularly to the higher elevations. 'The Wilderness
of the Peak' was now invaded by plantations to a height of even
5,50o ft and it is directly due to Hemileia vastatrix that the wanderer
through an area of 400 square miles between Nuwara Eliya and
Adam's Peak can see one of the densest examples of a monoculture
in the world. Only today, of course, the crop is tea, not coffee! It has
been estimated, in fact, that the area under coffee in Ceylon actually
increased from 176,000 acres in 1869, the year of Hemileia vastatrix,
to 275,000 ten years later.
Moreover, not only did the larger acreage for a time disguise the
lower yields, but the planters were also, as Lennox Mills points outs,
blinded to some extent by the 'sudden and unprecedented rise in the
value of coffee in Europe and America, a rise equivalent in a few
years to more than 5o per cent'. Finally there was a theory afloat that
Brazil, producing half the world's supplies by the mid- 187os, was
due'for a labour crisis. In a paper read to the Royal Society of Arts
in 1874, Mr W. Branson said that as the industry there was 'entirely
dependent on slave labour, the enterprise must eventually diminish,
op. cit.
85

if not die out altogether'. He also adverted to labour difficulties in
Java and ended with the following crashing prophecy:
'One conclusion can be arrived at. Ceylon and Southern India will
rapidly become the most valuable and important coffee-growing
countries in the world, offering every year an ever-widening field for
British capital and enterprise.'
And so, spring after spring, decade after decade, the 'snowy
wreaths' of blossom continued to appear on the hillsides, and autumn
after autumn, the wilting leaves showed their evil, powdery blotches.
Young William Forsythe' first encountered the plague 'on the
rocky fields under the cliffs' on the Upper Division of Gallebodde,
and even half a century later remembered how 'when we came to the
roads after walking through the coffee fields our white drill suits
resembled the colour of canaries'.
Some of the planters read these portents early but there were
many who clung to coffee, not for the economic reasons which have
been mentioned, but out of sheer faith in their long-cherished crop.
'The planter really seemed to love his coffee,' remarks Sir Thomas
Villiers, describing how the Superintendent of Glen Alpin cut out
the coffee trees 'sorely against his will, but orders from London could
not be denied'. Others simply defied the foul fiend, while thinking
ahead all the same, like the cheerful P.D. whose verses2 follow, verses
so neatly turned that one would like to know the name of the author.
Could it have been just Ferguson?
ODE TO A FUNGUS
A P.D.'S LAMENT
I'm resting in my bungalow

The rain has damped my fervour,
I've got a B & S or so,
Cheroots and the Observer.
These are the times when doubts awake
And dismal thoughts come o'er us,
These are the words that go to make
My solitary chorus
1 The 'Memoirs' of this well-known low-country planter were serialised in the
Times of Ceylon during February 1937. I am grateful to Mr J. A. Forsythe and
others for drawing my attention to them.
9 Printed in the Ceylon Weekly Observer, ra February 1881.
86

We've never had a moment's peace
Since thou hast come among us
Oh when will thy attentions cease
Perverse, persistent fungus!
I've got a most gigantic store
Some thirty yards by twenty;
It once was full, but now no more
It overflows with plenty.
My trees are all of noble size
To think 'twas I that grew them But oh the sight that greets my eyes
Each time I wander through them!
Thou Ward-defying fungus!
My coolies, if they have not struck,
Know that I hourly fear it;
My coffee, if it isn't shuck,
Is something very near it.
Oh who will rise to ease our ill
And give us proper chances,
Spread leaf disease in far Brazil,
And Medical Ordinances?
Thou Schrottky-hated' fungus!
And shall I always be P.D.
Or soon become an owner?
And shall I strictly take to tea,
Or try the mild cinchona?
At least we'd have a bumper crop
Just hark how it is raining!
Just one more soda let me pop
While thus my woes explaining We've never had a moment's peace
Estate-destroying fungus!
Pussellawa Coach, 3 February 188r.
' E. C. Schrottky, a German scientist, claimed he had found a cure.
87

But it all came to an end at last. Statistically the peak of coffee
exports had been reached in 187o, when just over a million hundredweights were shipped. Thereafter there was an almost continuous
decline; ten years later the figure had been halved; another ten years
and exports were under ioo,000 cwt., of which plantation coffee
totalled 87,164 cwt. and smallholding 10,748. But by this time, as
Mr Ukers picturesquely informs us, the 'dead coffee trees, stripped,
with branches cut level, were being exported to England to serve as
legs for tea tables'.1
The tribute to Hemileia vastatrix at the head of this chapter may
perhaps be exaggerated, but I am afraid there is no doubt that the
disgusting little fungus must be regarded as our industry's patron
saint. It is rather a ghoulish thought that we should perhaps have
linked the centenary celebrations with 1869 as well as 1867, and
honoured Hemileia vastatrix alongside James Taylor as the twin
begetters of Ceylon tea!
Later we shall be describing the changes in the finances and
personnel of the plantation industry arising from the coffee 'crash' or rather the long rumbling landslide which might be a more accurate
metaphor for it. But since this is closely linked with the rise of coffee's
still flourishing supplanter, tea, we will end the present chapter with a
note on a third alternative which was tried and at first with great
success. I refer to cinchona.
'Jesuit bark' was the name originally given to it in honour of the
missionaries of that Order who learnt the secret from the Peruvians and mythically cured the Countess of Cinchon of malaria! 'Quinine'
is the word today. During the expansive nineteenth century, the
demand grew enormously, especially in tropical countries, and by the
186os the world price was as much as 12s. an ounce. Java was an
important source so it was natural that Ceylon, with her many contacts in the archipelago, should have early begun to take a keen
interest. And here again, remarkably enough, the pioneer names are
Thwaites and Taylor.
I had looked with doubt on Mr Ukers' assertion until I came across a letter
(Tropical Agriculturist, September 1882) from a lady urging the beauty and
durability of coffee wood which 'when polished looks like ivory'. She adds that it is
revolting that 'such nice coffee stumps and stems should be allowed to decay and
be lost'; and the editor comments that he has seen 'pretty tables ornamented with
rustic work made from coffee stems'. All this came in useful a year or two back
when Mr 'Jimmy' Stewart pointed out to me a table in his bungalow on Talankande,
and asked 'What do you think that is?'
88

Arthur Sinclair records how in 1859 he visited Peradeniya 'at the
very moment when Dr Thwaites was opening a Wardian case containing the first few cuttings of this valuable tree sent to Ceylon, and
which I watched him plant in a propagation frame'. In 1861 the
Hakgalla Botanic Gardens, Nuwara Eliya, were started for the specific
purpose of growing and propagating cinchona. Thwaites was enthusiastic about the project from the start. An MS. volume in the Herbarium Library at Kew contains his immense and fascinating correspondence (1852-79) with Joseph Hooker, who succeeded his father
Sir William Hooker as Director of Kew Gardens in 1865. Most of his
letters (from which a selection ought to be published) naturally deal
with botanical questions, but news of the Hakgalla project keeps
bursting through. As early as 24 April 186o he wrote:
'This morning I left the proposed site of our new Cinchona garden,
and am much pleased with all about it aspect, soil, water, etc. ... you
can conceive nothing more lovely than the situation or more delicious
than the climate of the spot selected.'
By 14 May 1861, Thwaites is able to report 150 seedlings doing
well, and less than two years later (April 1863) the plants are '7 ft
high and the picture of robust health'.
About the origin of these first cinchona plants there are contradictory stories. The usual version is that they formed part of the
famous consignment collected by Clements Markham in South
America at the instance of the British Government, and that they were
'brought to Bombay, transhipped to Galle and sent on to IIakgalla'.
It is true that this is what was meant to happen, and in his Report for
the year September 1859 to August 1860, Thwaites looks forward to
the arrival of the plants at any moment. But next year he sadly
records that Markham's protgs reached Bombay 'in so unpromising
a condition that they were sent at once to the Nilgiris instead of a
portion being sent, as was intended, for trial on our hills. Nearly all
subsequently died.' Two other collectors, Spruce and Pritchett, were
supposed to be forwarding him plants from South America but theirs
never got further than Ootacamund. However these men supplied
him with some seed, which he thought was a much better bet, and
he raised 800 plants from it. Later, in acknowledging some Kew
plants, in 1861, Thwaites speaks of their poor condition and, with
heavy underlinings, exclaims that it must be 'Seeds and seeds only'
if a healthy plantation was to be created.
James Taylor's part in the affair has also been misunderstood.
89

Writers quote each other as saying that all the seedlings from Hakgalla
were sent to him, as being one of the most open-minded experimentalists available. The facts are that there were two principal
varieties of cinchona grown at Hakgalla in the early days succirubra
and officinalis. The first named seems to have been the more advanced,
and by late 1862 the first cuttings were available. They did not, however, go to James Taylor, if we believe (and why should we not?) the
story, told with humorous insistence on detail, by John Atwell,
superintendent of several Haputale estates in the 186os.
What moved him to take up his pen was a controversy which broke
out in the Ceylon Observer towards the end of 1882, and was transferred to the Tropical Agriculturist for February 1883. Mention had
been made of a 'wild statement' that the late John Armstrong had
introduced cinchona into Pussellawa in the 1840s. G. A. Dick, of
Kirklees and Gampaha, weighed in to say that he paid many visits
to Hakgalla and was urged by the Superintendent, McNicol, to make
large-scale plantings. He was discouraged by his proprietors, and
only planted a few trees round his bungalow. Two issues later, enter
`Jno. Atwell', drums beating, flags flying:
Ì claim to be the pioneer of cinchona planters, as myself and the late
G. B. Carson were the first two persons who purchased five plants each
from Mr McNicol at the Hakgalla Gardens in Oct. or Nov. 786z, for
which we paid five shillings for each plant and sixpence for a little pot
they were growing in, about the size of a pigeon's egg. No applicant was
at that time, so Mr McNicol told us, allowed more than two or three
plants each, but as I was the first applicant he said he would stretch a
point and let me have five plants at 5s. each and 6d. extra for the pot.
Mr Carson asked to be considered the second applicant and McNicol
acceded.'
Atwell goes on to say that two of these plants were still to be seen
on Gonamotava Estate.
By August of the following year (1863) the energetic McNicol (his
health unfortunately broke down a few years later, to Thwaites' bitter
distress) had produced nearly 14,000 cuttings of succirubra and 7,50o
of officinalis. Loolecondera got so quickly off the mark with plantings
of each kind that by July 1867 (the very year that Taylor set out his
pioneer tea field), the first commercial peeling of Ceylon bark could
be made, though it did not reach London until April 1868.
The sequel was sensational. Ceylon cinchona was immediately
recognised as superior to Indian, Java and all other rivals; in fact
John Eliot Howard, the quinologist, reported that 'there must be
90

something in the soil or climate of Ceylon peculiarly adapted to the
perfect growth of this plant'.
This was the more remarkable since Thwaites had previously
received a depressing report from Howard about the quinine of
Hakgalla's own bark! 'Not very flattering', he calls it, but saves face
by explaining that McNicol 'not liking to cut down our best trees,
sent hardly fair specimens of that species' the species in question
being succirubra.
Howard's report on the Loolecondera bark brought Taylor right
to the front. It was decided to concentrate on officinalis, and all
the Hakgalla cuttings of it then available were sent, free of charge,
to Loolecondera.
Nor was this the finish, if an obituary notice in the Scottish Weekly
News can be relied upon. This alleges that Hakgalla became overstocked with cinchona plants in 1872, and Taylor obtained over
ioo,000 of them in a 'sadly overgrown' condition. They were cut up,
planted in nurseries and eventually put out in two clearings on Loolecondera and Stellenburg respectively, which became the 'most
successful cinchona fields in the island'. But Taylor himself says
nothing about this transaction.
In any case, propagation at Hakgalla went forward at extraordinary
speed and by 1865 some fifty planters had applied for something like
half a million plants. But unfortunately the enthusiasm of the men
in the field was not matched in Colombo and London. The main
point of Atwell's letter already quoted was in fact bitterly to endorse
Mr Dick's views on the short-sightedness of proprietors. Mr Tottenham, one of the owners of Monarakande in 1864, actually made him
pull up and throw away 2,000 cinchona plants which he was putting
out on roadsides and boundaries 'waste of labour . . . not being paid
for ornamental cultivation' . . . how one knows the tone of voice!' In
the end he was allowed to keep a few hundred trees 'and Mr Downall
is now reaping the benefit'. Atwell sent other plants to his own estate
of Mahapittia (now Broughton), but here again his initiative came
unstuck, the major part being uprooted and destroyed by a later
superintendent 'because they were shading his fine coffee'! (The
1 It must be said that Charles Tottenham, engineer as well as estate owner, was
not in general an obscurantist figure, though he may well have been a dictatorial
one. Achievements claimed for him, among others, were the introduction into
Ceylon of the disease-resistant Liberian strain of coffee; a plan for a wire 'tramway'
linking Badulla and Kandy (this fell through); and the initiation of Ceylon's
plumbago industry. He also needled the British Government to adopt lyddite as a
high explosive! Tottenham owned much coffee land in addition to Monarakande,
but he never had first-hand experience as a planter.
91

vandal was supposed to be A. T. Geddes, but he fiercely repudiated
this.)
Behind all these stories, of course, is the fact that the spur of coffee
disease was still lacking. It was not until the early 187os that the then
Governor, the enthusiastic Sir William Gregory, persuaded a small
number of proprietors to take the crop seriously.
Whatever the scientific facts underlying Howard's report on James
Taylor's bark, the cinchona plant seems to have been remarkably easy
to grow in Ceylon and splendid trees resulted one is recorded on
Canavarella (the finest cinchona estate in the Namunukula district)
which was 43 inches in girth at 3 feet from the ground. Admittedly,
the method of shaving the bark was crude, if not disastrous, but the
need for cash to carry on the estates was pressing so that one could
hardly blame the proprietors. Plate rb reproduces a rare photograph
showing how the work was done in the 187os. It has the additional
interest of revealing quite clearly the way in which cinchona was being
interplanted with coffee at that period.
In contrast with the somewhat slow progress in getting tea under
way, cinchona was what we would call today a 'crash programme'
and like many such, it over-reached itself. The great planting boom
was between 1878 and 1883 when the area under cinchona rose from
under 6,000 acres to 64,000 acres. Exports showed a correspondingly
fantastic jump from 72,000 lb., valued at less than 9,000, to 7i
million lb., valued at k449,000. But the figures for 1884 have a
painful significance the quantity was it,865,000 lb., the value only
413,000.
The fact was that over-production, particularly in Ceylon, had
already brought about a steep fall in world prices as James Taylor,
with calm conviction, had prophesied years before that it would.'
In 1880, quinine was still fetching los. an ounce (the extraction rate
from bark was about 4 per cent) but by i886 the price had dropped
to only 2S. 4d., and in 1892 it was a bare shilling. The planters persisted for some years longer; as with coffee (and with tea in much more
recent times!) greater output partially obscured a fall in price and
maximum exports were actually reached in 1886, a remarkable figure
of 14,675,633 lb.
But already cinchona's reign was felt to be at an end. Those who
in earlier years had vetoed a plan to turn Craigie Lea, for example,
`Cinchona is a good spec. just now and there is a great rush to plant it in
Ceylon. But as it is only a medicine, though the most extensively used one, the
supply will soon bring down its price' (Letter of 6 November /876).
92

into a super-cinchona estate by planting out no fewer than z 50,000
seedlings were no doubt congratulating themselves; in fact by this
time, says Lennox Mills, 'over a wide expanse young plants . .. were
pulled out as weeds'. And not the young plants only. In its annual
report for 1890, the Planters' Association gives an interesting explanation of why there had not been so far the expected falling off in
production:
`The cinchona trees are now being gradually eradicated; where
shaving and close covering were performed formerly, now the tree comes
out, roots and stem. Harvesting bark in this manner accounts for shipments being kept up to the still existing large figures . . . the stem and
roots of an uprooted tree supply fully four times the amount of bark
that can be obtained by merely spoke-shaving a portion.'
On other estates the cinchona groves were handed over to the local
population to be exploited as best they could, but today most of the
trees, where they do exist, have reverted to a semi-wild state. A few
are still to be seen on Loolecondera, relics of the man who, it will be
remembered, was specifically honoured by the Planters' Association
as having 'laid the foundation of the Tea and Cinchona industries in
Ceylon'.
Cinchona had a short revival during World War II when a quinine
factory was actually set up in Colombo.
Looking back on the whole episode one feels that cinchona, even
more than coffee and tea, shows us the nineteenth-century planters of
Ceylon at their most characteristic: a little slow to adapt themselves
perhaps, but amazingly fast-moving once they got off the ground enthusiasts, optimists, and with an element of greatness in them.
93
First Interlude
THE MEN OF '75

INCHONA was a useful stop-gap, but as we now know it was
not the crop of the future. In its statistical summaries of the
rise of the Ceylon Tea Industry, the Ceylon Directory has ever
since the 189os given the following figures for the parallel expansion
of acreage under tea:
1867
Io acres
1868 1869 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876
1877
1878 1879 188o 1881 1882 1883

4,700 6,5oo 9,274 13,500 28,000 32,000
2,720
200
250
260
280
350
1,080 1,750
These are still quoted today, and (with one exception) must perforce be accepted, but between 1867 and 1874 they arc extremely
suspect. From what we already know about Loolecondera, Io acres
cannot possibly be right for 1867, and in Appendix IV this has been
altered to 19. On the other hand, unless the Ceylon Company got
busy on a much larger scale than now seems likely, `200' is a large
figure for the following year, 1868. However, from 1875 the message
comes through loud and clear! And because 1875 provides a convenient half-way house between the tentative pioneering 186os and
the headlong rush that was to come, I thought it might be interesting
to find out just who had committed themselves by that pivotal date.
A few mole-like hours with the Directories produced the schedule
which is printed opposite.
The word 'interesting' is certainly justified by the results. Assuming that the acreages in the 1875 Directory (on which my schedule is
mainly based) were compiled late in 1874, they tie up not too badly
with those given above. By a very rough calculation, and allowing a
conjectural 5 acres per estate for 'some tea', it looks as though there
were about 85o acres actually under tea by the end of 1874, as compared with Ferguson's estimate of 35o for 1874 (from Directory
figures compiled in 1873?) and 1,o8o for 1875. Heaven knows what
sort of a job it was to get the figures and make sense of them at a
94
THE MEN OF '75

CEYLON ESTATES GROWING TEA IN 1874-5
Superintendent Tea Acreage
Agents
Owner
DIMBULA
A. M. Ferguson A. M. Ferguson A. Ferguson Jnr.
Abbotsford
3
H. R. Wiggin
Ceylon Co.
Meddecombra Ceylon Co.
3
DOLOSBAGE
'In the district about 6 acres of tea'
DUMBARA
'some Tea'
R. S. Tytler
J. I. Strachan
Deegalla &
R. 13. Tytler
Pallekelly
& Co.
HEWAHETA (Upper)
136
Ceylon Co.
W. J. Jenkins
Ceylon Co.
Hope
R. W. Wickham
Rahatungoda C. Spearman Rudd Bros.
5
Armstrong
HEWAHETA (Lower)
too
James Taylor
Macgregor
Loolecondera A. G. Milne
& Co.
& Co.
KELEBOKKA
M. R. MacdonG. H. Dundas MacGregor
Deyanella
4
nell
& H. A. Clarke & Co.
KOTMALE
20
J. Bisset
Geo. Steuart
Capt. P. P.
Kataboola
(Tea & Cinch.)
& Co.
Gallwey
RAMBODA
15
J. R. Jenkins
Ceylon Co.
Ceylon Co.
Condegalla
R. A. Bosanquet some Tea'
Geo. Steuart
Hayes &
Poojagode
Bosanquet
& Co.
R. A. Bosanquet
Wavendon
& J. H. Alexander
RANGALLA
Baring Bros. & J. M. Robertson J. Catto
Galbodde
Fowlie, Rich- & Co.
mond & Co.
Illagolla
,,
..
,,
Lovegrove
t,
t,
NILAMBE
Heirs of L. St. Carey, Strachan T. Farr
Hermitage
45
(Tea & Cinch.)
& Co.
G. Carey
6
W. Howie
New Forest W. A. Howie Rudd Bros.
PP
PP
NUWARA ELIYA TEA DISTRICT

Alston, Scott
J. A. Rossiter
Fairyland
& Co.
Hazelwood
t t
Oliphant
Pt
Pt
F. Bayley
Pedro
'? '
G. Armitage
Tullibody
PP
J. A. Rossiter
11
E. A. W
Watson
'
SABARAGAMUA (RAKWANA)
C. Shand & Co. A. Milne
C. Shand
Barra
YAKDESSA
C. Powell Jones
Heirs of Hon. Geo. Steuart
Horagalla
& Co. & G. D. H.
Mrs Stewart
Elphinstone
Mackenzie
J. D. Watson
Seaforth
F. C. Herring
"
J. A. Rossiter
J. A. Ros'siter
'
Florence
& F. C. Herring & Co.
95
35
x8
15o
35
5o
x5
6o
16
too
period when even the names, ownerships and extent of estates were
in a state of hopeless flux.
As regards location, the schedule shows tea being cultivated to
some degree in 13 out of the 37 Plantation Districts then recognised.
Apart from the one estate in Kelebokka, there is none anywhere north
of Kandy, and none on the Uva side either. The old strongholds'in
Hewaheta show up well, of course, but the most significant developments are certainly in Nuwara Eliya and Yakdessa, where for the first
time we see new estates being opened expressly to grow tea (or in some
cases tea and cinchona). In fact, you will notice that Nuwara Eliya
is actually given the proud title of a TEA DISTRICT. The leading man in
that area, J. A. Rossiter, should be accounted among the pioneers,
in a very special sense.1
Another point that quickly meets the eye is that with not more than
half a dozen exceptions, tea was still being grown only at 'nursery
strength', so to speak. Nobody would bother to put out less than 20
acres as a commercial proposition, so what we are really seeing is the
groundwork from which the whole huge structure was to arise with
such magical speed.
The schedule, brief though it is, is rich in evocative names. Apart
from J. A. Rossiter and our familiar friends James Taylor and
W. J. Jenkins, we are confronted with the universal Fergusons;
Tytler, leader of the planters and bold though unfortunate irrigator
of Rajawella; R. W. Wickham, whose wife will be playing the
harmonium for us later on; J. Bisset, one of the three from Laurencekirk, out of whom two, A. H. and Walter, will be listed as 'in Natal'
ten years afterwards; and Bosanquet, even more prominent in
Colombo than 'up the country' . . . The men of '75 present the story
of Tea Triumphant in epitome.
1 This does not seem to have made him altogether popular. 'That beggar of a
Rossiter has been buying land all about, amongst which is Ratnillakelle, which he
has now called the "Great Western" Estate' (J. L. Ryan to Charles Hunter,
z8 January 1866).
96
Ia. Peacock Hill Coffee Estate in the Baring days. Left, the 'store' with its drying ground or
'barbecue'. Centre-right, the pulping house with water-wheel. Gampola in the distance.
lb. Stripping cinchona, showing how the 'new' crop was interplanted with coffee.
a.
Log cabin lifea hunting day. Three Haputale planters are said to be representedN. C. Davidson (Berragala),
E. C. Boyd Moss (Beauvais) and MacM. Challoner (Gallagama).
3a. Log cabin lifea working day.
3b. The jungle-clearing era in Dimbula c. 1865. Waltrim on right, Henfold on left.
4a. James Taylor.
4b. G. H. K. Thwaites.
4c. H. Martin Leake.
sa. James Taylor (right) with his cousin Henry Stivena Kandy photograph of 1864.
sb. Moss Park, James Taylor's birthplace, in the early '6os. The living-quarters were on the
left of the main building, the wheelwright's shop on the right.
6. Field No. 7 Loolecondera, with a few of James Taylor's original tea bushes after pruning
in 1966.
7a. The nineteenth-century tea bush. Right, more or less the William Cameron ideal; left,
the real thing.
7b. Contour planting today. A fine teascape on Hindagala.
, y
l.600
ia
0=t
"
' vaiths:
4.44.
Above, W.F..' tea on St. Coombs;

8a, 813. Tea-fieldsnow and
then. estate in the '8os.
a
typical
below,
%.4
6. 1
.,,;f4
Chapter 6
TEA TAKES OVER

`The Ceylon Planter had much to learn, and like a sensible business
man he set himself earnestly to work to learn it. The care and
intelligence displayed has borne fruit in the creation of a rapidlyspreading and remunerative Industry, which will go far to recoup
the losses which coffee entailed.'
THE TEA PLANTER'S VADE MECUM, 1885
VERY country has its 'ifs', and so does every industry. Ceylon
and Ceylon tea share this common lot. What if the British had
never come to Ceylon? What if there had been no rust disease to
attack and ruin coffee from 1869 onwards? The first question is
beyond my scope; and to the second the natural answer is that coffee
would have gone on its way rejoicing, and hundreds of millions of
people would not be drinking Ceylon tea today.
But it is not as simple as that. The preceding pages show how in the
mid- 187os i.e. by the time Hemileia vastatrix had really begun to
'bite' (as we say about budgets, sanctions, etc.) quite a lot of people
besides James Taylor and his little circle had begun to think hard
about tea. Newspapers and letters of the time are full of reference to
the benefits of having an alternative crop available. The 'exhaustion'
of coffee land, the need to extend the elevational limits of planting,
the ever-present danger of a slump tea seemed to provide an answer
to all these problems. So once the planters had made up their minds
that the coffee blight had come to stay and that cinchona was not an
economic any more than a medical cure-all, they turned to tea with
confidence rather than in despair.
But there were terrible casualties. The Ceylon planting industry,
while swinging along through the normal phases of hopefulness and
gloom, has known so far! three great periods of crisis. The first was
the coffee price collapse of 1847; the second the upheaval caused by
Hemileia vastatrix; the third the slump of the early 193os. The first
two, with
th which we are dealing just now, led to a drastic turn-over
in the ownership of estates and in their agency house connections (see
Chapter 8). Through the lack of a complete check-list of estates from
1825 onwards, it would be impossible without immense labour to
97

trace all these multitudinous movements in detail. But at least this
distinction can be made : that whereas land speculation and bad
management contributed to the first disaster (entailing in turn many
heart-breaking and undeserved failures), the second struck at a
reasonably well organised industry and caused radical changes in it.
Otherwise, there was considerable similarity between the events
of the late ralos and of 1875-85. In each case the island's principal
bank was involved, and in each the trouble was fundamentally caused
by the need to finance the coffee crop. Much earlier in this book I
commented on the fact that under Ceylon conditions there is no tea
crop in the normal sense, to be gathered and disposed of once in the
season; expressing the matter very crudely, you take as much as you
want when you want it and sell it in small batches or 'invoices'
throughout the year. In coffee, on the other hand, there was the
constant necessity to keep the under-capitalised planter's head above
water through the long months while he was waiting for the coffee
beans to ripen and be gathered, processed and sold. This led, in
despite of all banking rules, to large loans being made, and if a world
price fall or a coffee rust came along, borrower and lender both went
inevitably up the spout. In particular, it was the foreclosing of
innumerable mortgages that gave rise to the biggest flock of new
entries in the Directory of Estates and thence to so many groaning
apologies for lateness by the editor of the 'Red Book'.
The spectacular event of Slump No. 2 was, of course, the failure
of the Oriental Bank Corporation, which had taken over from the
Bank of Ceylon as the result of Slump No. r. It occurred on 3 May
1884. A bank failure like this was taken on the chin in those days;
the premises physically closed their doors; armed men kept the panicstricken depositors at bay; worse still, the bank's notes, which provided the main paper currency of the Colony (remember Miss Matty
again, and the poor young farmer with his useless 5 note!), lost
nine-tenths of their face value overnight and were hawked round the
bazaars for whatever they would fetch. Fortunately, in this case
laissez-faire was not carried to its logical extreme and the Governor,
Sir Arthur Gordon, by stepping in to guarantee the notes, checked
the threat of universal ruin.
To get a little nearer to how all this affected the planting community, let us take just one District as a miniature 'laboratory' say
Pussellawa, comparatively old and well established. The Directories
for 1875 and 1885-6 list some 33 comparable estates, though in the
ten-year interval new properties had, of course, come into being and
98
TEA TAKES OVER

a few had disappeared. Of the 33, no fewer than 23 would seem
either to have changed hands during the crisis, or to have been
affected by the liquidation of banks or by the upheaval among agency
houses. In fact, most of the major 'earthquakes' of the period, such
as the closing down of Messrs E. L. Sabonadiere and the dispersal of
the Carey family's 'empire', can be traced on this small seismograph.
Other districts with less financial strength behind them were even
harder hit; perhaps the unwelcome record is held by Rakwana in the
Mid-country where no fewer than i 1 estates out of z6 are marked
Abandoned in 1885-6. To Rakwana's trouble we have the first-hand
testimony of William Forsythe; remembering the wonderful kindness
and hospitality of the planters, when he spent a joyous six weeks
among a group of them as a mere 'tenderfoot', he sadly records 'every
one of them succumbed in the coffee collapse, and with the exception
of myself I do not believe there is another survivor of the festivities
in which I participated during Christmas 1877'.1
It is noticeable, conversely, that extremely few estates were abandoned in the highly organised 'Peak Wilderness' districts such as
Dickoya and Dimbula.
Of course, there was a personal side to all this change and heartbreak one estimate is that about a quarter of the European superintendents working in Ceylon when coffee was in its prime left the
island for good, many of them finding other planting jobs elsewhere
in Britain's still-expanding Empire. Of those that remained, many
went through a phase of extreme hardship, near to penury. The biggest
long-term effect, however, was the impetus given to the formation of
limited companies, whose successors today control so much of the
tea-planting enterprise.
Even without the coffee disease this tendency would have probably
emerged, as the individual proprietors began to retire and sought
means of maintaining a link (financial and otherwise) with the estates
to which they had given their working lives. The process began in a
small way in the I88os and accelerated enormously from 1891 onwards; the year 1895 perhaps marked the climax, with 17 new companies registered in Colombo alone. This question of company
formation will be dealt with in more detail later on, but it can be said
now that the manner in which it began has in a sense been perpetuated the presence of ex-planters means that there is probably a
higher level of practical experience on the boards of tea companies
than in most other industries.
1 op. cit.
99

And so gradually the cloud of financial instability lifted. In the
field, energy and optimism quickly reasserted themselves. In fact,
the more closely one looks at the industry about that time, the more
the almost automatic tributes which have always been paid to the
planters of Ceylon in this connection seem justified.
One of the most famous of these testimonials is the following'.
`Those were the royal days of coffee-planting in Ceylon, before a
single season and a rotting fungus drove a whole community through
years of despair to one of the greatest commercial victories which pluck
and ingenuity ever won. Not often is it that men have the heart when
their one great industry is withered to rear up in a few years another as
rich to take its place, and the tea-fields of Ceylon are as true a monument
to courage as is the lion at Waterloo.'
While these powerful (if not strictly accurate) remarks have been
universally credited to the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, their source
never seems to be given. The first of the standard works in which
they are quoted was Ceylon in 1903, where John Ferguson merely
says they appeared 'some years back' in one of Conan Doyle's stories
dealing with Ceylon. Now Conan Doyle never did write stories about
Ceylon, yet the attribution is quite correct. The famous paragraph is
in fact imbedded in a tale called De Profundis. This is part of a collection, The Last Galley, published in 1911, but De Profundis seems to
have made its first appearance in Jerome K. Jerome's magazine The
Idler in March 1892. It must have been there that it caught the everalert eye of John Ferguson.
The story is actually about a mysterious occurrence at sea, but the
hero happens to be a young man John Vansittart 'of the firm of
Hudson and Vansittart, coffee exporters of the Island of Ceylon', and
the year is 1872 when there was 'no cloud yet above the skyline and
the hopes of the planters were as high and as bright as the hillsides
on which they reared their crops'. It is in this curiously fortuitous
way that a celebrated quotation was born.'
Energy and optimism . . . they seem to thrive in the sweet mountain
air of Ceylon like the tea bush itself. Listen to Raymond Godfrey,
remembering his youthful days on Doombagastalawa in 1882-3 when
things were almost at their worst:
'On this estate I was soon engaged in opening land for tea, and I
cannot tell you the pleasure of this work; clearing, burning, roading,
1 I am grateful to Mr J. R. Fairhurst for putting me on the track of De Profundis.
Conan Doyle's tribute is often printed with the two sentences transposed (and
garbled!), but the above is the original form.
100
TEA TAKES OVER

draining new land and, better than all, making bridges across ravines
out of large logs, over which, as a test, I rode one of the two elephants
which were employed in uprooting the old coffee trees in other parts of
the estate.'1
How one would have liked to unearth in time for this book a
photograph, yellowed but retrievable, of those elephants, leaving
their great footprints on a piece of Ceylon's history!
Not that everyone went about the job in quite such a drastic way.
We have already seen how on many estates tea was nursed up literally
under the shadow of cinchona. Elsewhere it was interplanted with the
coffee. One cannot help feeling that the trouble this caused on Glen
Alpin (as recorded by Sir Thomas Villiers)2 reflects at least in part a
superintendent's reluctance to let his old favourites go:
'Planting tea under coffee was not so easy as planting in forest land.
The lower branches of the coffee were lopped and suckers allowed to
grow up so as to get the benefit of such crop as might grow on the suckers
as a source of revenue. Coffee pickers were not too careful of the young
tea plants, and a certain amount of damage was done. When the young
tea was about two years old the coffee stumps were removed and used
on most estates as firewood.'
The period of transition was indeed a fascinating one. It was a stage
at which many plantation districts must have at any rate looked
prettier (because more varied) than at any stage since they were virgin
forest and certainly more so than they do today. Mention of Glen
Alpin brings to mind John Ferguson's description of the Badulla
region at the time when the Governor, Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon
(saviour of Bank Notes), arrived to inaugurate the Province of Uva
in February 1886. This memorable piece of reportage has been
'mined' by more than one writer, but it is too vivid to be ignored.
After lengthily recording the ceremonies at Badulla itself the
speeches of the headmen, the proclamations from the backs of elephants, the euphoric planters' breakfast Ferguson shows us a
mounted cavalcade setting out on the third morning in the direction
of Spring Valley. The Governor and his party, he says, rode up
through the rich valley alongside the Baduluoya and Baddegamela:
'On Rockhill, the Governor saw young tea, fine cacao and flourishing
cinchona on the one hillside, fenced off by a line of sapanwood trees,
while on the other side of the road he looked down through an avenue
Communicated by Mrs Crofts-Bolster. For elephants still engaged on similar
work today see Plate 15.
2 Pioneers of the Tea Industry (Colombo Apothecaries Co., rgst).
I01

of rubber trees into a rich sheltered hollow, where was as fine a sight of
cacao (among coffee and tea) as is to be seen in Ceylon, the trees just
coming into bearing and the dark red pods showing out well from the
light green foliage. Higher up, the Governor came on the Glen Alpin
tea-clearing running below the road for 40 acres of a lay of land and soil
which ought to be perfection for tea, and the 18 months to 2 years
growth was all that could be desired. Here the size of the stems of tea
plants as much as the cover of foliage arrests attention, and no doubt
impressed the Governor as much as the close-jointed coffee in Haputale
did. At Glen Alpin glimpses are obtained of splendid cinchona clearings,
or rather groves, in Oetumbe and Weyvelhena and, further on, the
potatoes of the famous old Kottagodde and Maryland estates, still kept
in cultivation, betoken the richness of the soil and goodness of climate.'
When they finally got to Spring Valley, Ferguson has to admit that
things had become rather less picturesque; a large area had just been
cleared and planted with tea 'the little plants just peeping above
ground' (it appears that the only Uva estate actually manufacturing
tea at this stage was Galloola). However, the scenic effects more than
made up for this rather boring foreground Spring Valley being one
of those up-on-end Uva estates with a rise of over 3,000 ft from
bottom to top! It was here, in fact, that Ferguson noted that sharp
little detail of the workers having to tie themselves to trees in some
places while carrying out the operations of weeding or plucking;
and though part of the field traditionally associated with this is no
longer in cultivation, there are still places on Spring Valley where most
people would prefer not to stand let alone work without holding
on!
Ferguson's account of the genial and civilised proceedings at
Badulla is valuable in another sense it testifies to the very delightful
way of life which the British had evolved for themselves in these
rather improbable surroundings, and which they quickly resumed
when the cloud had passed. Ample other evidence exists for it of
course; it survived intact many decades later and is perfectly within
the recollection of men and women who are by no means centenarians
today! But round about the time of which we are writing it does seem
to have had a special flavour, not unlike the Welsh Border society as
depicted in Kilvert's Diaries, with its picnics and field sports and
cricket matches and unsophisticated dances and quite a lot of
emphasis on church!
This last aspect is happily touched in by Miss Helen Caddick, a
well-to-do Midlands lady, in her manuscript diary now preserved in
102
TEA TAKES OVER
Birmingham Public Library. She tells how a chance encounter in

India in 1893 with a Mr and Mrs Wickham led to an invitation to stay
with them on what she calls Àgras Patinas' Estate (it was in fact
Holmwood) when she came to Ceylon. She was met at Talawakele
station and driven 13 miles to the estate along a road just completed
by Mr Wickham 'until then, everyone had to walk or be carried'.
Sunday brought another drive of one and a half hours to church.
The service was in 'a sort of barn prettily fitted up' though a permanent church was under construction. Mrs Wickham at the
harmonium,' of course, and the pleasure of a sermon 'wonderfully
broad and liberal for a churchman' Miss Caddick was a Unitarian!
Then home to luncheon through the springing tea, and a little coffee
still, and such cinchona groves as had not already been 'chopped down
for firewood'.
Well, we have come a long way from the 'Knuckles Bricks'! It was
in the late 186os, apparently, that Ceylon began to attract a type of
planter who was neither a bought-out Army Corporal nor a Scots
gardener. Writing in the Ceylon Observer many years later, 'Old
Planter' muses:
'I am not sure whether the new social ways came in with the ladies
or with the leaf disease. I only know our simple ways suddenly changed
in many places; such as dressing for dinner and that sort of thing, never
heard of in the jungle before the sixties.'
Dressing for dinner alit Here we reach that great hallmark,
palladium, shibboleth, totem pole, phylactery a bit of each of the
British race in jungle or desert under Queen Victoria, and indeed
much later. It would be amusing to pinpoint the moment (perhaps
in some very early Noel Coward comedy) when this nightly ritual was
demoted sharply and forever from a serious moral tenet to a comic
clich. However, it had critics even in its heyday, from at least two
rebellious classes the under-equipped tourist and, of course, the
rude Old Timer. How one's nerves twitch in sympathy with Herr
Ernest Haeckel, travelling through wild Ceylon in the early 188os:
'I arrived after sundown, at a very remote plantation, and the hospitable master gave me very clearly to understand that he expected to see
%But harmoniums were not confined to church in Victorian Ceylon! 'Old
Colonist', writing to the Observer from Glasgow in March 1883, in praise of 'The
Colombo Waltzes' by J. McCombie Murray, imagines the young planter 'retiring
now and then to the bungalow to practice a few bars on the harmonium . . .'. One
planter maintained two 'There's Byers with harmoniums twain, For light and
sacred song' A. M. Ferguson (`Song of the Men of Uva', 1862).
103
me at dinner in a black tail coat and white tie. My sincere regrets and
explanation that my light tourist's kit for this excursion in the mountains
could not possibly include black evening dress, did not prevent my host
donning it in my honour, nor his wife, the only other person at table,
from appearing in full dinner toilet.'1
Of course, the Old Timers knew just what ought to be done about
evening dress in their day, as one of them jovially recalled, it was
quite common for a too smartly equipped arrival to have to stand by
while his neighbours 'playfully cut his new dress coat to ribbons'.
From there it was an easy step to wild accusations about kid-gloves
and absinthe. . . .
It must be added that while there is no doubt about the changed
social status of planting, it was still regarded as, on the whole, an
occupation for younger sons, and even for the problem boy! If you
failed for the Army, were too tongue-tied for the Bar and had no
vocation for the Church, well, there was always Ceylon! And that was
exactly the situation of Adolphus Folingsby, son of Sir John Folingsby,
Bart., in 'The Shuck Estate':
Planting coffee or tea, or we'll say sugar-cane

From your self-respect could not detract, Sir,
But Lombard Street, 'Change or that d . d Mincing Lane
I cannot abide, that's a fact, Sir!

Sir Jellaby Jingle and Admiral Sneeze
Have each got a son in Ceylon,
If I stand you five thousand, you can if you please
Make a fortune. Come, say are you on?'
Adolphus was on, so out he went, accompanied no doubt by the
trifling luggage then prescribed just 'two good trunks, two small tin
boxes, a large linen bag like a sailor's, a fitted gladstone bag and a
hat-box' but not (as dear old John Ferguson would have advised)
his sister. As for the sequel, how he met a talkative stranger who sold
him a 'shuck' (played out) estate, how he worked hard and made a
success of it and finished triumphantly by marrying rich old Colonel
1 It is pleasing to be able to assure the world that Professor Haeckel did actually
own a tail-coat. Elsewhere in that enraptured book, A Visit to Ceylon (op. cit.), he
remarks that one of the few things which did not please him was the climate of
Colombo, which rusted everything and covered all his clothes with 'the prettiest
forms of mould. . . . What particularly vexed me, my famous black tail coat, which
has to play as great a part in Ceylon society as in England, was quite whiter
2 V. H. Hamilton and S. M. Fasson, Scenes in Ceylon (London, Chapman &
Hall, i881).
1 04
TEA TAKES OVER

Jagger's daughter, that is a saga which I suspect my public will
happily take as read.
But, of course, in addition to Adolphus and his tribe, some extremely solid characters were all the time putting down their roots in
Ceylon so firmly that in most cases they were destined to survive all
tempests. We have already met the Men of '75, and a whole troop
more are to be found in such a chronicle of worthies as Sir Thomas
Villiers' Some Pioneers of the Tea Industry. Too slim a volume,
unfortunately, and mainly confined to the Uva side, it does remind
us of Ceylon's debt to such as the Retties of Spring Valley (the
Governor's hosts on that morning in 1886) and a dozen other estates
besides; the Stewarts Robert, Walter and George hand in glove
with the Retties when Ouvah Coffee Estates (later Ouvah Ceylon
Estates) was storming ahead; the Coombes of Poonagalla; the Cottons
of Dammeria, and many others. Elsewhere, while the far-extended
Elphinstones and Hay Camerons tended to decline, Bosanquets and
Shands (at least two separate clans of the latter) proliferated on every
side.
From the names of men one's mind inevitably drifts to those of
their properties. The nomenclature of tea estates is a study in itself.
So far as I know it has never been seriously undertaken; I commend
it to some retired Ceylon man who finds the time hangs heavy! Local
Sinhalese place-names have always been widely adopted (or adapted),
but particularly in the early coffee days; then, with the coming of the
proprietory planters there was a big increase in the proportion of
English names only (to be Irish!) most of them were Scottish! The
Wilderness of the Peak was certainly their native heath. For example,
out of 145 estates registered in the Dimbula District by the early
187os, my count is 39 names of obviously Scots origin and many more
`probables'. Glasgow, Glassaugh, Gleneagles, Glenlyon . . Lochiel,
Logic, Lorne . . . Stair, St Andrews, Stirling, so the roll-call goes.
For the rest it was a vast and unmanageable miscellany. Natural
enough to find Mr MacCarogher planting on Erin-go-Bragh and
Messrs Gwyn and Thomas on Cymru, while an illusion of squirearchy
is created by the use of quite a number of family names Cameron's
Land, Christie's Land, Mackenzie's Land, Viner's Hill, Yuillefield,
and so forth. But otherwise it is Tasmania here and Tientsin there;
Eton looks askance at Harrow; Mayfair and Belgravia acknowledge
the existence of Kensington and Campden Hill; Sherwood waves
across to Epping Forest; Alice Holt gossips with Willie and Louisa,
while Avon flows peacefully by. . . .
105

Some of these have long since vanished or been absorbed, but at
least one well-known estate bears its owner's nickname to this day,
as Sir Thomas Villiers tells us in his chapter on El Teb. Captain
Hamilton Gordon was A.D.C. to that same Governor, Sir Arthur
Hamilton Gordon, whom we met inaugurating the Province of Uva.
He had served with the Gordon Highlanders at the hard-fought battle
of El Teb in the Sudan (29 February 1884); being perhaps a little
fond of recalling his exploits, he was nicknamed 'El Teb' Gordon on
the analogy of 'Chinese' Gordon. And in due course, his Army career
at an end, he remembered the pleasant island of Ceylon, bought a
small estate called Heathstock near Badulla, renamed it after his
personal 'battle honour' and built it up into the fine big property
which it remains today.
We must also at least mention, without daring to embark upon, the
vast parallel system of Tamil names for estates, used by the workers
from the earliest times in fact at one period these were the only
names they recognised. A rather touching feature was the way long
since dead or retired planters were commemorated in many instances.
Hermitage, for example, was referred to as Sweetin Kadu for years
after E. C. Sweeting (proprietor in the i86os) had disappeared from
Nilambe, and the memory of Captain Jolly, first chairman of the
Planters' Association, was agreeably kept green in Jally Durai Totum
(Fairieland, Hantane). The system of alternative names is still in full
force at the present time.
Before leaving the planters absorbed and beginning to be happy
once more in their work, there is one group among them of whom
we have so far heard little or nothing. A friend who was reading some
early chapters of this book in draft rather startled me by remarking
'Hardly a Sinhalese name yet!' But of course it was quite true and
inevitable. We have seen how large-scale planting in Up-country
Ceylon was from the coffee days onwards essentially a British enterprise, and it is that aspect which is by far the best documented.
But it was by no means the whole story. The part played by the de
Soysa family in the neighbourhood of Kandy (they started the Bank
of Kandy and were transport contractors to the British Army as far
back as 1815) has already been mentioned, and on a smaller scale,
coffee-growing became a highly important part of the Ceylonese
economy. When production was at its zenith nearly a quarter of the
crop exported was produced by indigenous planters and smallholders,
in addition to some 5o,000 cwt. which went into local consumption.
Even as late as 1883-4 the Ceylon Directory lists no fewer than 600
io6
TEA TAKES OVER

'native coffee estates' in the Central Province alone. Only those with
ten acres or upwards are included and as the total acreage was 18,915
this indicates an average of about 3o acres per property.
But coffee was a standby much further down the scale than that.
In a fascinating letter written to the Government Agent, Badulla, in
1886, James Irvine recalls how in the 15 years up to 1869 close on 47
million was paid out to Ceylonese coffee-growers, something like
half of it in Uva. 'The town of Badulla was a wilderness of coffee,
including the Government Agent's grounds, the site of the church,
the burial ground and all the adjoining land where the gaol now
stands, and all the village gardens a mass of magnificent coffee.' The
estate kanganis had their own small plantations too.
Irvine considered that as the result of the coffee blight the condition of the Uva peasantry was 'very similar to that of the Irish
peasantry after the potato famineexcept being sold up by the government for taxes instead of by big proprietors for rent'. And indeed the
better recorded woes of the planters have rather smothered the much
more widespread misery and hardship which Hemileia vastatrix
caused to the 'little people' of Ceylon.
Irvine thought that tea might well be grown by the villagers though
his own choice would have been cotton; for tea he advocated a State
garden producing and distributing seed of good jat.
This view was shared by many others, including Thwaites, who
urged on the Government his vision of roadside plantations (China
bohe 1!) as being 'specially adapted for Sinhalese villagers in the
uplands of Uva'. But the new crop did not catch on among this class,
and we shall have to wait over half a century to see the development
of tea-smallholdings on a serious scale in Uva or elsewhere.
Reverting to the planting side, it is ironical that out of the few
non-European names one reads in the early lists of Up-country
proprietors most are neither Sinhalese nor Ceylon Tamil, but Indian.
Best known of the small group of wealthy Indians who went into
coffee and in some cases turned over to tea were Cowasjee Eduljee
and Bennajee Jeejeebhoy. The former owned Wewesse in the coffee
days and later on opened Debedde and Unugalla as tea estates, his
superintendent being the redoubtable George Morrice, with a very
experienced Ceylonese assistant, S. Roderigo. Bennajee Jeejeebhoy
owned Nahavilla (Superintendent, Thomas Wood) in the 187os.
In the Mid-country and lower down, we do find some Sinhalese
names which are still conspicuous in planting Amarasurya, Pieris,
Dias, Rajapakse, de Mel and the de Soysas were also 'diversifying'
107

into tea, as a note in the Tropical Agriculturist (December 1884)
suggests:
`Mr C. H. de Soysa the well-known Sinhalese capitalist is, we are
glad to hear, about to plant tea on an extensive scale on some of his
Low-country properties. Mr de Soysa has already put out some tea.=
Charley Valley plantation, Maturata, and no doubt this will be followed
ere long in Hewaheta, Maskeliya and other districts where this enterprising gentleman has land.'
Otherwise, the majority of non-European owners would seem to
have been mortgagees drawn from the Chetty community, or else
planters on a very modest scale.
A few pages back I mentioned Kilvert. The unique frisson of his
wonderful diaries is not, of course, generated merely by archery
meetings or excursions to the Isle of Wight, or even by his touching
and maybe perilous obsession with small girls; it springs from the
perpetual contrast with the savage peasant life of the Welsh border
hills, in and out of which he stepped with his own unconscious
goodness as safe-conduct. This counterpoint of primness and savagery
applies also to the Victorian life of Up-country Ceylon. It was not
that the planters and their families were hemmed in by a wild and
drunken peasantry; the quiet Sinhalese inhabitants of the scanty
villages pocketed among the tea estates made virtually no impression
on them, one way or the other a peculiar state of affairs which did
not apply in the Low-country and the more populated parts of Uva.
But right on their doorsteps were their Tamil labourers, a community
as foreign to Ceylon as the planters themselves.' Brought from India
under conditions of considerable hardship, leading an intense and
often vociferous life in their 'lines' or barracks, following their own
religious and communal rites, and then for the most part vanishing
back to the distant places from which they came a curious people, a
strange destiny!
We resume their history where we left it in Chapter a with the
establishment of the first hospital facilities on the Malabar Coast
(1867); we will carry it forward here until just before the setting up of
the Coast Agency of the Ceylon Labour Commission in 19o4, this
being the culmination of the long and hesitant approach to a welfare
system for the Tamil labourer which had been pursued all through the
early days of tea. Allowing for the whole Victorian world's still primitive code of social responsibility, I consider that the planters emerge
Ceylon has also, of course, its resident Tamil community of ancient standing.
io8
TEA TAKES OVER

as well from this story as any private or governmental body of the
day. Their Association was candid in narrating it in their centenary
volume, and I have their permission to base my account on that,
though using other sources as a counter-check.
Through the years, three routes had been evolved from the South
Indian recruiting areas to Central Ceylon:
1. Pamben to Mannar. In Government vessels at a cost variously
stated as `6d.' and 'R. 1' per head. Thence on foot by the North Road
to Matale (131 miles), where the gangs either entrained if they had
enough money or else continued walking to their destined estates.
This was the most popular route. Shelter was provided at regular
intervals; wells were sunk to supply pure water; and there was a
hospital at Dambulla.
z. Tuticorin to Colombo by sea. This cost Rs. 3 or 4 per head and
was obviously too expensive for most immigrants.
3. Ammapatnam or Tondi to Colombo by sea a shorter and
cheaper route, but very irregular in the early days.
The great and (to our way of thinking) terrifying problem of all
these routes was disease. Labourers arriving at Colombo went to a
depot at Kelaniya, but there were no adequate quarantine arrangements and unless sickness had actually occurred on board ship men
were allowed to proceed up-country unhindered.
The way things worked on the northern route was quite different,
but even more disconcerting to the modern mind. Gangs arrived at
Mannar, often with cholera in their midst. The sick were put into
hospital, but everyone else set off for Matale. From then onwards the
long trek itself acted as a sort of quarantine for the planting districts but at other people's expense. Sir West Ridgeway, a well-informed
Governor (1893-1903), wrote as follows about what happened next:
Ìt would seem at first sight as if under these circumstances the chances
were remote that more than a small remnant of a gang of fifty or sixty
persons would reach Matale, but heavy as the mortality was, the great
bulk of the coolies did reach their destinations, and each of them as a
rule free from disease. The sick were abandoned either on the road or
at some of the established halting places. The rest of the gang pressed
on and in this way the disease was gradually eliminated.'
Sir West was evidently referring to 'elimination' of disease among
the immigrants, but what about the fate of the villagers? Cholera, in
spite of some severe outbreaks, was not endemic in Ceylon, so those
109

infected took the full brunt. How many victims there were we do not
know, but the Assistant Government Agent at Mannar reported 500
villagers in his district having died of cholera between 1891 and 1898.
Whatever the true statistics, the whole mechanism cried out for
overhaul. The Planters' Association were keenly aware of what needed
to be done, but years passed before real action came. After a commission set up by Sir West Ridgeway had studied the question, a
quarantine station was finally established at Ragama, with hospital,
bathing stations and so on. The Governor then closed the North
Road route, the wisdom of his decision being shown when cholera
broke out repeatedly at Ragama between 1900 and 1902 each
episode of course representing a danger averted from the unfortunate
villagers of the North Central Province.
And when the gang finally reached its destination, what then? The
accommodation provided was basic in the extreme; simply long rows
of single-room apartments opening on to a common verandah the
'workers' lines' familiar to every tea estate visitor from the earliest
days till now, though there have, of course, been great improvements
in detail. The number of occupants assigned to each room varied,
but in the primeval days it was certainly high. The recommendations
of W. A. Sabonadiere (1866) I forbear to quote; by the time E. C. P.
Hull was writing (1877), the arrangements sound reasonably civilised:
'Coolie lines are usually in the form of one long building partitioned
off into different apartments; each apartment being ten by twelve feet
square, opening into the general verandah, which should be five or six
feet in width, and extend along the entire building. Two or more persons
will generally occupy one room of the above dimensions, provided they
are of the same caste; it is much the best plan, however, to leave the
coolies to make these little dispositions and arrangements among themselves. Each married couple should, of course, be allowed to appropriate
a room to themselves."
However, with Cave's end-of-century Golden Tips2 (not always a
reliable guide) we are back at:
'Each compartment accommodates about four coolies and it is obvious
that they do not enjoy the luxury of much space; but their ideas of
comfort are not ours, and they are better pleased to lie huddled together
upon the mud floors of these tiny hovels than to occupy superior apartments.'
1 op. cit.
London, Sampson, Low Marston, 'goo.

I I0
TEA TAKES OVER

With this final sentence we reach a general proposition which, at
first sight, belongs to the category of 'Oh, but the fox likes it!', but to
which all observers, of whatever race, subscribed; whereas the Sinhalese have always passionately preferred an individual house with a
garden (or even a shack with a patch) round it, the life of the lines
did seem to suit the South Indian Tamil temperament.
I have used the word 'barracks'. It has to be remembered that the
whole system was originally built up on the idea of first a seasonal,
then a periodically migratory and only much later a resident labour
force. Though even from the start some wives and children accompanied the gangs, the workers were more in the category of, say, the
Irish navvies of our own time, a-roaming in search of good pay but
leaving their home roots behind. It was only gradually that families
settled down on their chosen estates or drifted off to other occupations cart drivers, servants, store-hands and became more or less
identified with the local population. According to one calculation,
some two million workers made the journey from the Malabar coast
to the planting districts between 1837 and 1874 and arrivals exceeded
departures during that time by about io per cent. But in view of the
loose control that was then exercised, not too much reliance need be
placed on such figures, which were the subject of long continued
controversy.'
From the point of view of community life, the system whereby
workers were recruited by the kangani largely from among his
relatives and friends in his own village certainly laid a solid foundation, even if it did not (and does not!) prevent family quarrels breaking
out on a monumental scale. 'Lines rows', with a lot of shouting and a
certain amount of hair-pulling, are a familiar feature of estate life,
but as Mr Harry Williams points out in his splendid chapter on the
subject,2 they seldom lead to anything worse the Tamil labourer is
far less addicted to the knife than his mild neighbour down in the
Sinhalese village.
Where did the planter come into all this? In the earliest days there
was much brutality, but on the whole the traditional relationship can
1 The sort of thing which could set statistics at naught is suggested by a fantastic
yet circumstantial story told in a Ceylon Observer editorial in April 1883. According
to this a batch of workers 'benefiting by our special coolie rate', was seen at Hunapitiya waiting for the British India steamer to take them to Calcutta 'under advances
for Darjeeling'. The implication is that it was easier and cheaper for an Assam or
Darjeeling planter to take advantage of the Ceylon recruiting system than to try
and collect workers in Bengal.
op. cit.
III
be summed up as a gruff paternalism, deepening often into respect

and even affection on both sides; the planter, with perhaps 2,000 souls
living a completely self-contained life on his estate, had to act
towards them in the mixed capacity of commanding officer, labour
manager, business adviser, peacemaker and Dutch uncle. His own
womenfolk naturally became involved too. We have always liked the
sound of Miss Annie Bissett who (at a much later period) kept house
for her bachelor brother Arthur on Yapame in Madulsima. Living
on the Lower Division, they once got a midnight message that cholera
had broken out in the lines on the Upper Division three miles away.
Without a moment's hesitation, Sir Thomas Villiers tells us, Miss
Bissett seized a bottle of cholera mixture and was 'off up the road to
doctor those coolies who had implicit faith in her'. The outbreak was
checked. She evidently had a technique for all occasions; another
time, while staying with a friend, they were disturbed by a woman
coming screaming from the lines to complain that her husband had
beaten her. Far from sympathising, Miss Bissett said she knew all
about the story and was going to beat her too. The scene closes with
the complainant receding down the road, hotly chased by Miss B.,
cane at the ready.
In point of fact, if 'welfare' developed slowly on the official level of
immigration control, the planters were extremely active in promoting
the health of the workers once they reached their estates it was not
just left to Miss Bissett! At one time they employed European doctors
specially to look after their labour force, and they were always pressing
for more hospital and dispensary facilities. One of the petitions
brought before Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon was for a dispensary to
serve Moneragalla 'at present labourers have to be carried 40 miles
to Badulla'. In due course a dispensary was installed in a building
provided by the planters, and the interesting comment was made that
it proved of even more value to the local Sinhalese than to the estate
workers. This, in fact, happened throughout the planting districts.
The Planters' Association centenary volume pointed out that the 'cost
of the construction, maintenance and operation of these hospitals
was borne by a cess imposed on the plantations', and then brought
the story up to date:
'They were, in due course, absorbed into the health system of the
Island and few people realise that, to all intents and purposes, a fair
proportion of the provincial hospitals in existence today were built,
equipped and staffed at the expense of the Coffee planters. The medical
cess is still collected by Government, though the hospitals are used
112
TEA TAKES OVER

largely by the indigenous population quite free of charge, whereas
estates have to pay for the treatment of their immigrant estate labour.'
Other developments in the planters' long battle on the health front

will be dealt with in Chapter r r. Estate schools, too, were until quite
recently the responsibility of the planters.
All in all, the Tamil who made the long journey from his South
Indian home found an environment suited to him and a standard of
living which, simple as it was, surpassed in most respects what he
could have hoped for in his native village. He and his wife and children
enjoyed the field-work and stuck to it well, even in the monsoon
weather, with the addition of 'cumblies' (shawls) over their normal
clothes looking, as an early observer noted, 'like a flock of dark
sheep grazing'. But there are also many mentions of the custom of
dressing the workers in cast-off regimental uniforms. Skeen even
puts it into verse:
'Some clad in cumblies, and some deck'd
In scarlet tunics, some in blue,
Old regimentals, odd to view
On such a swarthy, bare-legged crew.'
In the quaint manner of officialdom, the Government suddenly
decided that all this was rather infra dig. and on r October 1896 issued
an ordinance 'To Regulate and Restrict the Wearing of Naval and
Military Uniforms'. What it said, roughly, was, This Must Stop, but
added a well-meaning rider that this only applied to uniforms which
had not been `so re-dyed and altered as to cease to resemble uniforms'.
The Government stores continued to sell large numbers of these
military discards, which occasioned some sarcastic remarks at local
P.A. meetings. It may be added that abundant bits of battle-dress
which may not have been re-dyed but have certainly ceased to resemble uniforms, may be seen today around any planting district in
the rainy season!
Working on from year to year (in scarlet or otherwise), and with the
chance of rising to a more responsible and better-paid job, the Tamil
labourer has always managed to save money out of wages which for
many decades did not exceed 8d. or is. a day. In fact, what to do
about the savings of the immigrant labour force is one of the biggest
problems in the current repatriation policy.
This has been quite a full chapter, but even so there are many
aspects of the nineteenth-century planting life on which it has been
impossible to touch. Sport, for example, including the big-game
113

hunting which was still virtually unrestricted.1 The planters loved it
passionately and so did their dark-skinned entourage, but perhaps
their stories of the there-I-was-face-to-face-with-a-gigantic-rogueelephant type are best left embalmed in the multitudinous memoirs
of the time.
What we have seen in the last pages is the emergence, after all the
storms and setbacks, of the typical Ceylon tea estate as a go-ahead,
prosperous and (in Victorian terms) well-balanced community.
1 How alarming must have been a visit to the bungalow of Major Thomas
Rogers, Badulla's first planter (on Ridipane 'Major Totum'), and slayer of wild
elephants! Tombstones and Monuments in Ceylon quotes Hoffmeister:
'When, six years ago, he had reached his thirteen hundred, he ceased reckoning any
longer. His whole house was filled with ivory, for among the hosts of the slain were
sixty tusked elephants. At each door of his verandah stood huge tusks, while in his
dining room every corner was adorned with similar trophies.'
Rogers was killed by lightning at the age of only 41; the famous controversy over
whether his tomb (still to be seen in Nuwara Eliya burial ground) was also struck
by lightning, is something with which this volume has (thank heaven) nothing to do.
I 14
Chapter 7
THE HARD WAY IN FIELD AND

FACTORY
'One of the most nauseating duties of a tea planter must be tasting
his different makes, and comparing them to those of other estates.
This business must be bad enough for one who performs his work
in London or elsewhere, but for a man boxed up in the hot and close
atmosphere of a factory, with the smell and fumes of tea constantly
about him, it must be far from agreeable to wash one's palate out
with rasping liquor, which nearly sets your teeth on edge, even
though one can gloat over the fine price likely to be realised hereafter in London.'
THE TEA PLANTER'S VADE MECUM
HE product known to the world as 'Ceylon tea', like every other

organic substance, has come under the two great influences,
origin and environment nature and nurture. And, in each
respect, its history is one of handicaps overcome and finally turned to
good use.
It was 'born at all adventures', like the human soul. Neither in the
184os, when the first experiments were made, nor 35 years later when
the 'rush into tea' took place, was there any solid body of doctrine in
the island about how to select seed; how, where or even when to plant
it; the best soils and aspects for a nursery; and so on through all the
numerous stages of growth and manufacture. The old planters were
great empiricists and in any case (as we have already seen) they were
essentially coffee-men catapulted into tea, rather like blacksmiths
forced to turn garage hands.
From the days of the Worms brothers onwards, seed was one of
Ceylon's greatest problems. It was early learnt that certain jots were
going to be more suitable than others, but most of the pioneers had
to make do with what they could get with results seen in every tea
field in the island today. Bitter were the complaints about the price
and quality of seed. There were three main sources imports from
Assam or China; tea-seed nurseries in Ceylon; and seed-bearers on
individual estates. Loolecondera was of course the first estate to
receive a direct import of seed from Assam, but by 1872 the Ceylon
1 15
Company was regularly selling it in boxes of one maund.1 Hakgalla

began supplying seeds and plants about the same time, though at first
an 'almost prohibitory' rate of 25 cents per plant was charged
(reduced to Rs. i per dozen in 1874). Later with the furious expansion
going on, many planters must simply have taken seed from the
nearest bearing bushes, but some well-organised estates made a 'good
thing' out of supplying more or less selected seed to their neighbours;
in 1882 there is a mention of Rs. 16,000 worth coming off Horagalla,
though over what period is not made clear. The origins of this particular nursery, incidentally, are characteristic of those times remember J. D. Watson gathering seed off an old abandoned Nagastenne
tree in 187o and putting it into a nursery on Horagalla!
Watson's planting methods were very similar, being largely based
on the 'shove it in and see what happens' principle:
'When opening up Seaforth in 1872, I experimented on 2 acres near
my hut, lines and cattle shed, with the tea plants, and in each pit or hole
I planted a tea plant and a coffee plant. The result was that the tea
plants took possession, and eventually killed out the coffee plants; at the
same time the plants throve most luxuriantly.'
The next year we find him trying out some of his favourite Nagastenne seed on five acres of patna 'the worst piece of soil on Seaforth';
then in 1874 he gets 64 maunds of seed 'hybrid and indigenous' from
Darjeeling and establishes a three-acre nursery by the riverside on
St Rumbolds, at an elevation of 2,30o ft. From this he plants out
nine acres of tea in May 1875, and though the job was done at 'the
hottest part of the year', it was a great success. The tea plant has to
be tough!
The old planters were compelled to work in this hand-to-mouth
way not only because of their lack of technical know-how, but an even
more desperate lack of cash. With their coffee world collapsing
around them, their one idea was to get the tea in quickly and gather
a crop and sell it. W. H. Aitken, in a letter of June 1883 (quoted in
the Tropical Agriculturist), strongly deprecates this process, which
according to him involved cutting down (i.e. severely pruning) the
plants at only 18 months and then 'bolstering them up with cow
dung' in order to get a quick crop: 'I put it to you gentlemen' he
exclaims, 'as practical planters, whether the few miserable pounds of
140 lb. according to the Ceylon Directory for 1873, though the maund is
normally reckoned at 8o lb. It is by origin an Indian rather than a Ceylon measure hence perhaps the uncertainty.
116
THE HARD WAY IN FIELD AND FACTORY

tea obtained can compensate for the stunted growth which must ensue!'
One cannot help thinking that this is a hit at the so-called 'Cameron
system'. We have already encountered the enigmatic figure of William
Cameron and heard something of his pruning methods in the context
of Loolecondera. Now it is the moment to attempt a closer look. But
everything about Cameron is befogged. Even his surname does not
seem to have been his own. Often it is given in quotation marks;
Frederick Lewis describes him as 'a man who called himself Cameron'
and elsewhere he is referred to as 'formerly Campbell' and as a
native of Mull.
Anyway he seems to have arrived from Assam sometime during the
187os, and not being attached to any particular agency house, set up
in business as a sort of free-lance V.A. Curiously enough, it is at the
moment of his death that we get nearest to him. It occurred on i June
1883 at Mariawatte, where he had arrived a day or two before 'in an
alarming state only able to walk with great difficulty, heart and
lungs affected . . .'. But this was only the sequel to an incident which
had already much weakened the poor fellow, and which we hear about
from William Forsythe. After referring to the magnificent sheets of
Low-country tea on Dunedin and Indurana he goes on:
'I accompanied William Cameron, an Indian tea planter, on one of
his periodical visits to Indurana; being unaccustomed to our rugged
country, he slipped on a slab rock and broke his thigh. It took me two
days to get him down to Colombo, he suffered the agonies of the damned
till his thigh was set in the General Hospital. He died of malarial fever
shortly afterwards and is buried at Gampola. He was assuredly a great
authority on Tea in all its branches and taught us much.'1
Not everyone echoed that last sentence. Cameron was in fact the
first of Ceylon's tea pundits, and as such was a mark to be shot at.
Take the question of pruning, with which we started. He was certainly
accused of advocating much too severe treatment of the young bush.
Another allegation was that he favoured the drastic removal of side
shoots, thereby producing a bush roughly of the shape shown in
Plate 7a, which looks so strange to modern eyes. This was linked with
very close planting, which of course it facilitated.
It was also held against Cameron that he recommended planters
in a particularly exposed location to let one row in three grow up to
provide seed-bearers and wind-breaks. Imagine a P.D. telling his
owners that he proposed to devote one-third of his acreage to this
purpose!
1 op. cit.
117

Whether Cameron really gave such advice we cannot confirm; there
is on the other hand ample evidence that Ceylon benefited on balance
from what Frederick Lewis called his 'restless enthusiasm', and his
unshakeable belief that at least 600 lb. per acre could be got off fields
which in their primitive stage were only yielding 200-300 lb.
Turning from seed-beds to planting-out, here again lack of capital
dictated the tune. Those who in later years criticised the roading,
draining and general arrangement of the early Ceylon estates, forgot
Sir Edward Rosling's terse phrase 'Ceylon tea was born in penury
and reared in economy'. The effects of this are still felt today, when
Ceylon has to compete with new tea-growing countries where everything can be planned for the most practical and economic working.
Communications both on the estate and with the cart-roads outside
were particularly crude. Much work time was absorbed in manhandling leaf and made tea, as well as planting materials of all kinds,
from one point to another, so it was considered a mighty innovation
when about 1882 'advanced' estates like Spring Valley pioneered the
use of aerial ropeways. They moved A. M. Ferguson to an almost
Capper-like flourish:
`What with bundles of guinea grass flying down from distances aloft
which reduced the grass-cutters to pygmies, baskets of manure going
up and empty baskets coming down, the air seemed alive with large
hawks and mountain eagles."
Mr Wilfred Rettie has reason to remember these aerial ropeways
of his father's, because he himself was busy on a new system when
5i ins. of rain fell during the night of 13 December, 1913, followed
by 4 ins. in zo minutes next morning, and a whole year's work on
the ropeways was washed away! With better roads and versatile motor
vehicles everywhere, this particular form of estate transport (a
simpler version of which is the one-way wire shoot shown in Plate
4a) is slowly becoming obsolete; when the inevitable maintenance or
replacement problem arises, it is usually cheaper to scrap.
The early factories, again, had to be built 'on a shoestring'. They
were of two kinds converted coffee 'stores' and completely new
structures. The former (see Plate ia) presented several problems.
The planters soon found that at least twice as much under-cover
space was needed, mainly for withering a process roughly corresponding to the drying of coffee which was done on open-air barbecues.
In Assam the leaf-houses were and are separate buildings, but in
1 Tropical Agriculturist, September 1883.
I 18

Ceylon from the very start (except in the case of some converted
'stores') the solution was one, two or three tiers of withering lofts
above the main factory floor. There were two reasons for this - the
cramped sites available on the average Ceylon estate, compared with
the spacious plains of Assam, but more particularly the fact that
coffee stores were mostly built low down by streams, to make use of
water power, which meant they were cut off from the currents of cool
air needed for withering. So the planters built upwards - later on in
some cases removing their factories to high, exposed sites which erred
in the opposite direction! When it was a case of building afresh,
economy had sometimes to be carried to extremes. Says William
Forsythe:
'The first low-country tea houses had to be seen to be believed! They
consisted of wattle and daub walls, cadjan roofs, mud floors and a few
chulahs, with grooved tables for hand rolling; hand sifting with round
sieves came along later - our tea was sent to Colombo in bulk and there
sifted and sent to the home market.'1
Frederick Lewis gives us a more detailed description of the old
processes which is of historical interest:
'After withering the leaf in a small closed room, the leaf was handrolled on tables - a laborious and somewhat disgusting operation - after
which it was thinly spread over shallow calico-bottomed trays, that were
placed on the tops of what looked like inverted hollow pyramids, the
apex of which was filled with live charcoal. The tea was by this process
slowly dried, the greatest care being essential to see that it was not left
too long over the charcoal fire or it would get burned. Equally, it was
most important to see that it was not under-fired, so that altogether the
process was of extreme delicacy, requiring very close attention, and
considerable skill.
'The temperature of the room in which these open stoves - "chulahs"
they were called - were placed, was very high, and the atmosphere nearly
poisonous, so that tea making in the olden times was not all joy though
the made product averaged a very good figure in the London market.'2
It is only human nature that many people should have held firmly
to the belief that tea made by these primitive methods was better in
flavour than anything that came after, but of course the sheer
weight of leaf soon drove them out. By 1883 Forsythe found himself
getting 40,000 lb. off Dunedin, and to cope with this he decided (an
exception to the 'building upwards' rule) to erect a 'round, timber,
cadjan-roofed withering shed with a mud floor, a much larger building than any attempted before'.
' op. cit. I op. cit.
119
So as tea production started on its expansive course, the financial

problems of mechanisation had to be faced. One solution tried was
the erection of 'central tea factories' to which the estates of the neighbourhood could send their leaf. In Nuwara Eliya we hear of Mr
Rossiter's factory on Fairyland, where by 1884 he was processing
`the leaf from the hybrid tea in the surrounding garden; from the field
of China on Hazelwood three miles away; from some 14,000 bushes in
bearing of fine Assam tea on Capt. Bayley's Pedro close by; from Mr
Grinlinton's Portswood estate two miles further on and from Kandapolla
six miles distant.'
The `Rossiter service', however, went further, since we are told it

suited the proprietors to let Mr R. do the plucking with his own
coolies and to pay him 4 cents per lb.
Curiously enough it was Mr Wharram Megginson, Rossiter's later
successor as the 'king pin' of Nuwara Eliya, who was responsible for
the most famous of the 'central' factories that on Carolina Group
in Dickoya Lower, whose KAW mark made such an early impression
on the London market. A somewhat florid account in the Tropical
Agriculturist for December 1884 describes the factory, seen from the
railway, as giving one 'the idea of barracks calculated to accommodate
several companies of soldiers' and indeed the site is still an imposing
one. It was a really well-constructed affair no mud floors or cadjan
roofs on Carolina!
'The building is of wood, on finely-dressed stone pillars. There are
three floors, the total height from ground to ridge being 4z feet. Another
storey can be added when required and there is ample room on the
levelled space for spacious wings. The space from centre to centre of
pillars is 1si ft., the timber being consequently very massive. An
elephant was constantly employed for nearly three months removing
the posts and beams from the estate jungles.'
The great factory was 'fed' not only from four estates belonging to
Leechman & Co. (Agrawatte, Carolina, Kadawella and Trafalgar),
but with leaf from any other estate which was content with a return
of 9 cents (about ad.) per lb. Consignments of green leaf often arrived
by train a curious scene.
At the time, there was much talk of this 'central factory' idea being
extended all over the island. We hear mention too (December 1883)
of the opening of the Ceylon Company's 'tea-curing factory' in
IZO

Colombo, a somewhat mysterious establishment to which green leaf
was sent down by bullock-wagon. It must have been in an advanced
state of wither when it arrived! But all such conceptions soon faded
out, for the good reason that every proprietor worth his salt wanted to
put his own teas into his own chests and take the market by storm.
So, somehow or other, capital was found for the necessary
machinery, as well as for the 'tea house' itself. In this department,
Ceylon was excellently served from the start, having had the good
luck to attract at least two engineers of genius, John Walker and
John Brown. It is true that the solid groundwork had already been
laid, as the result of experiments in India, and such famous firms as
Marshall of Gainsborough (with the Jackson patents) and Davidson
(`Sirocco') in Belfast were already operating. Nevertheless, Ceylon
owes an immeasurable debt to the two men who, so to speak, sprang
from her own soil with, of course, the necessary previous incarnation in Scotland!
John Walker was first on the scene. After a short spell as a pupilteacher, like James Taylor, he had started commercial life as an
engineering apprentice in the famous Deanston Mills (near Glasgow)
of James Finlay & Co. prophetic name! When Deanston ceased
making its own machinery young John got himself taken on by Wilson
Ritchie & Co., of Colombo, where he arrived in 184z. Not long
afterwards he had a bit of a `barney' with his employers; left his job;
took another on a sugar estate (Perth, Kalutara); bred guinea-fowl;
refused (oddly enough) an opening as a coffee engineer at Kandy;
went home; tried to export a sawmill to Australia; got shipwrecked;
got married; decided to return to Ceylon; had a disastrous voyage
including the death of his young wife from yellow fever; made his
way to Kandy; and found his vocation at last as a designer of plantation machinery. Soon he acquired the business of Affleck & Co., and
being joined by his brother William (another ex-Deanston man)
started the business from which the two present Colombo firms of
Walker Sons & Co. and Walker & Greig are both descended.
It was John Walker & Co. who carried out such 'prestige' jobs as
the planning and equipping of Carolina at the then prodigious cost
of Rs. 35,000, and it has long been supposed that the roller with
which they supplied Hope Estate at a much earlier date (1878) was
the first built in Ceylon, but the James Taylor correspondence has
disproved that! The Walker 'Economic' tea roller and 'Colombo'
dryer, introduced in the 188os have, with numerous modifications,
held their ground until our own time. In quite a different line of
IZI
11
country, by the way, John Walker invented a Road Tracer, which

became standard equipment on tea estates all over Ceylon.
The Walkers, like most of their contemporaries in Colombo,
owned one or two estates, but rather as a side-line; in the case of
John Brown the pattern was different. Though an engineer by training
1. inventor
by temperament, he spent much of his career as a
rinr"
a
--planter on an important scale.
Born near Aberdeen in 1826, he came out East in 1848 to take up a
post on the Indian Railways. But through a shipboard acquaintance
with Mr and Mrs R. B. Tytler (what an infinite number of careers
must have been shaped or diverted during the long lazy weeks between
the Port of London and Point de Galle!) he switched to Ceylon and a
first job under the Worms Brothers of Rothschild. Then came his big
chance a six years' stint on Tytler's celebrated attempt to irrigate
Rajawella Estate near Kandy from the Mahaweliganga River. It was
a heroic operation. In order to raise the water to a height of nearly
Soo ft above river-level, massive pumps and miles of piping had to be
imported from Britain, but though the system worked after a fashion
in the i85os it never really justified the colossal expense involved,
and in the end was abandoned.
His work on this installation over, John Brown turned to planting
and opened a number of estates in Badulla district. Soon he was
made managing director of a group of companies which owned such
famous properties as Glen Alpin and Spring Valley this was of
course in the pre-Rettie era.
John Brown quickly applied his engineering skill to coffee estate
operation, and was the pioneer of wire shoots and aerial ropeways,
of which those on Spring Valley, already referred to, were among the
first. On the tea machinery side, he was the inventor, among much
else, of the 'Triple Action' roller always associated with his name. To
look after all this, as well as to act as agents for his various estates,
John Brown in 1876 founded the Colombo Commercial Company,
which grew into such importance in subsequent years.
*
Compared with the straightforward manipulation of the coffee bean

(much of which was done in the Colombo Mills, anyway), the conversion of the tea leaf from green to black turned out to be an intricate
and even exasperating process which daily challenged the ingenuity
of everyone engaged in it, and not merely of the John Walkers and
John Browns. Pundit or not, William Cameron wrote with wisdom and
122

generosity of the part that complete newcomers could play. 'Perfection in tea manufacture,' he says (Ceylon Observer, 1883), 'will not
come by sticking all the time to one estate. I have seen lads who had
only been tea planting a few months strike out new ideas and teach
men of zo years' experience. For instance the other day in Maskeliya
I saw what might be termed Tom Gray's patent. Simply three sieves
placed one above the other, slung on two wires and worked by one
boy, doing as much work as three men could have done!'
This was only one of innumerable improvisations (see Plate 13a).
Withering tats, rollers, sifters, dryers and all the supplementary
gadgets and gimmicks of the factory have been from the start until
now the subject of perpetual experiment, scores of patents, and
acrimonious argument! Accusations about stolen ideas were frequent
the principle of the once well-known Barber roller, for example, was
considered to have been 'pinched' from Frater's design for Walker &
Greig of Badulla.
No one who is not a specialist could plough through the Press
correspondence alone on these subjects without a sense of weariness
and confusion, though humour breaks through now and then particularly of course when a Shand is involved. There was a splendid
controversy round about 1883 over the dryer invented by Charles
Shand of Barra. It was described as follows by the Tea Planter's Vade
Mecum' two years later:
'As this machine can be made any length and width, the quality of leaf
which can be manufactured is only limited by the extent of drying
surface. One, five feet wide and fifteen feet long, will admit of about
forty pounds of tea being spread as thinly as on Sirocco trays and, if
heated to i50 degrees Fahrenheit, would dry a maund per hour. The
steam for heating the thin galvanized iron drying-surface is generated in
the space (3 inches) between it and the thin boiler-plate bottom.
'The machine, which is made steam-tight, is partially filled with
water, and placed on a fire-stove. It is evident that a comparatively small
quantity of fuel will generate sufficient steam to heat a large surface,
especially if the smoke-flue is placed under the whole length of the
machine.'
Shand first of all made a model of the apparatus. It was seen by
William Cameron, who attacked it in print under the pseudonym
of CHA'. He called it a 'toy' machine, said zo or 3o would be needed
on a small estate, and that the tea would be ruined by the escape of
steam and smoke 'we are all making bad enough tea as it is in
Calcutta, Office of Indian Tea Gazette r885.
123
Ceylon at present, for goodness sake don't let us seek for machines
to make it worse!' In spite of this someone alleged that Cameron had
praised the apparatus, to which he trenchantly replied that in his view
it tainted the tea and made it practically useless.
Shand himself then weighed in with a mild reminder that what
Cameron had seen was only a model, that it had only arrived in Barra
the day before and had been set up on the factory floor without any
special arrangements for the removal of smoke and steam, and that
not more than one or two full-sized machines would be needed for
each estate.
That seems to have choked off `Cha', but Shand is soon in print
again, complaining that an idea by J. R. K. Law for a steam-operated
dryer is an infringement of his patent. To which Law replies with a
sarcastic enquiry whether the Shand patent covers all possible and
impossible applications of steam power maybe Mr Shand invented
steam?
Under this and similar criticisms the Shandean patience began to
wear thin, and when a gentleman from India later complained that,
contrary to what he was promised, the apparatus was no good for
drying cardamoms ('cracked the shells') he got a crusher in reply 'My dryer will not answer for any purpose whatsoever in the hands of
people not gifted with an average share of intelligence'.
However, in spite of all this heat and friction (enough, if converted
into energy, to keep any number of model tea-dryers in continuous
motion), the basic apparatus for tea manufacture took shape at a
very early date, and has not been seriously challenged until quite
recent times. The planter of today, transported back to the famous
Mariawatte Factory as it was in x885, would find himself in recognisable, if slightly old-fashioned surroundings. He might be startled,
on entering, to notice underfoot a floor of pinewood 'specially
imported from Scotland', but after that he would move with assurance through a veritable 'showroom of Messrs Jackson's machinery' engine and boiler, two Excelsior rollers, a large-sized Victoria dryer,
Eureka sorter and Invincible tea mill or cutter, 'all supplied through
that eminent firm and manufactured by Messrs Marshall, Sons & Co.
of Gainsborough'. In a factory of this kind, he would be told, it was
reckoned that three able-bodied men could do the work of forty in
hand-rolling days some consolation for the fact that Mariawatte
finally cost between Rs. 6o,000 and 70,000 rather than the Rs. 40,000
which was the original estimate; and here the visitor from 1967 would
allow himself a knowing smile.
124

The great tea machinery companies certainly did their best to help
the hard-up planter. In the mid-188os Davidsons were advertising
their No. 1 Sirocco Dryer (Plate 12) for X85 f.o.b. Birkenhead or
Glasgow; or only Z42 for the No. 2B, which was the upper or drying
box portion of the No. 1, together with a do-it-yourself kit for the
lower half.
And what of the end-product? At this point 1885 and 1967 part
company? When Mariawatte's new factory turned out its first
invoices, China exports to the West were still a year off their zenith,
and in spite of the powerful expansion of India and now Ceylon -Chinese standards of tea manufacture still ruled the market. And
China tea of course meant large leaf tea. So we find that right through
Ceylon's pioneering days Whole Leaf grades were the staple; Broken
grades merely a by-product. According to a London tea trade circular
of the time, Ceylon exporters imitated India's lead in putting the
following grades on the market: Whole Leaf Orange Pekoe, Pekoe,
Pekoe Souchong, Souchong; Broken Broken Orange Pekoe, Broken
Pekoe, Broken Pekoe Souchong, Congou, Pekoe Fannings, Pekoe
Dust. Moreover, some factories were already producing 'fancy' grades
for special markets, e.g. Flowery Orange Pekoe for Russia. While
Ceylon's total exports were still at a modest level and the individual
'breaks' arriving on the market so small, this multiplication of grades
was of course absurd, and even without promptings (which soon
came) from Mincing Lane, many of the planters realised this. C.
Spearman Armstrong, the thoughtful proprietor of Rookwood, was
writing as early as December 1882:
`Pekoe and Tea Dust we cannot help; Broken and Fannings we cannot
help; but I fear that . . . some of our tea-makers will, to their own loss,
sort into too many classes. I take it that Pekoe, Broken Pekoe, Pekoe
Souchong, with Pekoe Dust, Tea Dust and Broken and Fannings, put
through Reid's machine, are about the right thing.'
A nice touch that Fannings (so sought-after today) as something
which 'we cannot help'!
Two years later, the out-turn of a typical, though well-managed
factory is given as 40 per cent Pekoe, 25 per cent Broken Pekoe, 19
per cent Pekoe Souchong, 14 per cent Fannings and Dust; 2 per
cent Broken Mixed. Later still, in 1893, Miss Caddick reports that
at Diyagama Factory, 'the largest and best in Ceylon', Dick-Lauder
was producing only Pekoe Souchong, Broken Pekoe and Dust; but,
as we have seen, the dear lady was a sermon-taster rather than a
125
.
1111
1111111.11111.111..111=1.1111

tea-taster by upbringing, and we would be unwise to take her on
trust.
So here is our planter, his estate laid out, his bushes pruned according to (or in defiance of) the Cameron method, his labour force
recruited, his factory turning out its variegated grades what had he
still got left to argue about with his neighbours at P.A. meeting or
the Club? Well there was always Shade, always Weeding, always
Manure!
The earliest shade (apart from some venerable jak trees popular in
the coffee era) was usually provided by the remaining coffee or by the
cinchona with which so much of the early tea was interplanted. But
soon the young tea needed its own shade, strategically placed, and
the relative virtues of dadaps, albizzias and other species begin to be
discussed. Shade has always seemed to me one of those subjects in
which personal whim and private superstition have played at least as
important a part as scientific doctrine. Witness Villiers' very early
story of Robert Stewart on Attampettia. This sporting enthusiast
came back from a race meeting in Colombo during a period of
drought to find that his Conductor had pollarded all the shade on
one particular field thought to be fatal in such conditions. But in
fact this field recovered quicker than any of the others and after that,
we are told, shade was 'regularly removed' (presumably pollarded) at
the beginning of the dry season. There must have been many such
fortuitous incidents, later quoted as 'gospel'; today of course, the
actual elimination of shade is in the forefront of experiment and
controversy!
When it came to weeds, the argument usually turned on the desirability or otherwise of 'scraping'. Hull reminds us that the dangers of
this process the scrupulous hoeing up and removal of every weed
in sight were recognised even in coffee days; not only was much of
the surviving topsoil carted away with the weeds, but the loosened
surface was left at the mercy of the next rainstorm.
One heretic in fact, G. F. Halliley, kept up quite a running fight
on behalf of selected weeds as ground cover, insisting that weedy
fields often gave better yields than clean ones, but he was quickly
overwhelmed by the orthodox view that 'the best cover for a tea field
is tea'. This sounds all right, and is well supported by the planting
technique of today; but any photograph of Ceylon tea in early times
(Plate 8b) will show a good deal more naked earth than green bush!
Weeding won, the work being mainly done by contract. Towards
the end of the century the rate for this was about is. 4d. per acre per
z6

month and the system, we are assured, kept the estates 'far cleaner
than most of the flower gardens of England'.
Manuring was another subject which produced two opposite
schools of thought soon to be joined by a third. James Taylor
boasted that throughout his time Field No. 7 was manured only
once (after about 19 years), yet remained in good heart and gave
much the same crop from start to finish; in other words he represented
the 'conservative' wing which believed that moderate yields, without
'boosting' but with careful plucking and manufacture, were the key
to success.
The opposite school was represented by H. K. Rutherford and his
colleagues on Mariawatte, which gained almost world fame by being
the first Ceylon estate to reach an out-turn of r,000 lb. per acre.
However, this was on a particular area of zoo acres only, and it was
confessedly done by piling in the manure!' Challenged on the point,
Rutherford gave some highly interesting figures in a letter to the
Times of Ceylon (January 1885). He says that the zoo acres was planted
4 ft by 4 ft giving a total of 2,722 bushes (with to per cent vacancies).
Annual yields rose from 8o lb. per acre in 1880 (the estate was first
planted with tea about 1878) to 136 lb. in z 88r, 312 in 1882, 55o in
1883 till the famous figure of 1,092 lb. was reached in 1884. This big
jump was achieved 'after 65 per cent of the estate had received cattle
manure in 1882 and 1883'. It is noticeable, however, that Rutherford's
own estimate of what a normal estate should yield, without special
boosting, is much more modest zoo lb. per acre after two or three
years and no more than 300 lb. at six years and upwards.
If one looks back to the circumstances in which so much of Ceylon's
early tea was planted, it is surprising that yields of even half Mariawatte's ',coo lb. were frequently reached. The nature of so much of
the soil itself, with abundant rock near the surface, the lack of alluvial
deposits, the erosion to which reference has so often to be made, and
the use in many cases of 'worn-out' coffee land all these would be
enough to discourage any partnership less stubborn than Camellia
sinensis and the Ceylon tea planter!
It was towards the end of the nineteenth century, and therefore of
the pioneer period, that the third element came on the scene the
use of àrtificials', so vigorously advocated by that remarkable
character Joseph Fraser. As he was born in 1852 and lived till 1914,
1 Procured in a rather ingenious manner, if the Tea Planter's V ade Mecum is to
be believed: 'This Estate has the great advantage of being manured at a very low
cost, being close to a railway-station, and to the town of Gampola, whence all the
street-sweepings are carted direct to the Estate, by contract'.
127

there are plenty of veterans still alive today who remember him well,
but his name is also perpetuated in the three Fraser Scholarships in
Tropical Agriculture founded in his memory at Aberdeen University,
and in the Fraser Memorial Nursing Homes in Ceylon, for which his
widow bequeathed money.
Fraser was a Scots country boy, in the James Taylor tradition, and
he left school at the age of 13 to go on a farm. Pitakande Estate, in the
Matale district, was the scene of most of his manuring experiments.
These certainly helped to popularise the use of imported phosphates
and nitrates, which were in turn responsible for an increase of yields
towards the turn of the century, though the frequent accusation that
Fraser temporarily ruined the industry by over-stimulating production is slightly absurd. He was not in any case a blind fanatic for
artificials, as his standard mixtures, containing large proportions of
castor cake, fishmeal, bones, etc., show. Many of Fraser's original
calculations are still preserved in the laboratories of the Colombo
Commercial Company, with whom he was long connected.
William Forsythe always thought that he 'saved' Fraser for Ceylon;
it was after a visit to Dunedin Estate, which greatly impressed him,
that Fraser decided after all not to join his brother in Canada, as he
had fully intended to do. Forsythe also mentions, however, that a lot
of Up-country planters mistrusted Fraser's 'system' of high cultivation mainly because they thought it cost too much! He quotes a
well-known V.A.:
'He comes along like a doctor, pulls a prescription out of his pocket
and says, "apply this to your tea-fields and you will improve them",
but for my part I believe in keeping the tea bush under par.'1
Not a belief that thrives in 1967!
So far, almost the whole of our attention has been given to the
planters and their problems. Time now to set off down the westward
road to find out what has been going on all this time in Colombo.
1
op. cit.
128
Chapter 8
BUYERS AND SELLERS IN COLOMBO I

Visitor to Hakgalla Botanic Gardens: 'And what do you call this
new pest you have discovered?'
Superintendent: 'We have no Latin name for it yet, so we just call
it the "Colombo agent" you see, it goes on taking all it can out
of the bush till it destroys it.'
START with this early version of a terrible old Ceylon 'chestnut'
because it is the reproach of the middleman in all ages, and might
as well be faced right away. Middlemen exist normally because two
sets of people producers and distributors find they need a man in
the middle, to collect at one end and share out at the other. All sorts
of attempts have been made (not least in tea) to suppress this 'parasitic' fellow, but he always surfaces again because it is found cheaper
and more efficient to employ him rather than for either group to try
and do the whole job themselves.
This applies very exactly to the various categories of brokers,
merchants and wholesalers who buy and sell tea in Colombo, as elsewhere, taking their respective 'cuts' before it finally reaches the
grocer's shelf; not quite so exactly to the agency houses. These (while
sharing the odium as we have seen above!) are intermediaries of a
rather different sort. Their function is to look after the interests of tea
companies and numerous other concerns which do not find it economic to maintain their own representation in Colombo; conversely,
Ceylon-based companies have agencies functioning (though in a
more limited way) on their behalf in London.
Since the Colombo agency houses often have deeper roots in
Ceylon even than the companies they represent, and since the history
of the industry cannot be understood without some knowledge of the
personalities connected with them, they are given pride of place in
this chapter.
It will be remembered that the earliest purchasers of coffee lands
were for the most part either Government officials and other well-off
members of society, or else sheer speculators; they knew no more
about commerce than they did about planting and placed themselves
in the hands of a managerial class which had already begun to exist
in Colombo. In the case of London investors, moreover, slowness of
129
communications in those days between Europe and the East left most
of the initiative with the people at the 'other end'. Added to all this
was the lack of banking facilities (remember that Colombo had no
banks at all as late as 1840); with credit always such a problem it is not
surprising that some agency houses figured prominently as estate
developers and owners themselves, as well as acting on behalf of
absentee proprietors.
It might be helpful to begin by tracing the rise of an agency house
in its pure form, using as example the firm of GEORGE STEUART
& Co., not only the oldest surviving but one of the few which, once
the pattern of its business had become established, has never operated
otherwise than strictly as agents. The tale is fascinating in its own
right, and we are lucky that at least part of it has been told by the
founder in his own unsophisticated words.
His name was not in fact George but James Steuart George was
his younger brother. He was a ship's captain trading to the East in
the early nineteenth century. His memoirs' open with a stately
invocation to Almighty God ('who alone has the power and the will
to forget and forgive') which vaguely recalls Captain Ahab especially
as he launches off almost at once into whaling adventures! His
voyages sometimes for private owners, sometimes in command of
Government ships naturally brought him from time to time to
Galle or Colombo. On one of these trips he had arranged to convey
the new Governor, the Hon. Sir Edward Paget (1822-3), but though
this fell through it gave him a bit of 'interest' (in the old-fashioned
sense) with Paget and his successor, none other than Sir Edward
Barnes, the future coffee pioneer. This he nourished to such good
purpose that in 1825 he was appointed Master Attendant at Colombo
in other words Superintendent of the Harbour.
Here, in addition to the normal duties of such an official, he carried
out various quite legitimate business deals, such as making advances
to traders who were prepared to take over the swollen Government
stocks of cinnamon.
Alas, it was just then, when his patron was himself setting up in
business as an estate proprietor, that there was a clamp-down on
James and, as recorded in Chapter 2, he received peremptory orders
to take the Civil Service oath against engaging in trade. To save his
pension rights he complied and handed over the business to his
brother Joseph, former Master Mariner of Dover, who had already
been helping him on the commercial side. James remained Master
1 Recollections Personal and Official 1817-1866 (Colombo, Times of Ceylon, 1935).
130

Attendant until x855, but meanwhile received two other Civil Service
appointments which rather nicely hit off his curious career Commissioner of the Loan Board (x841) and Guardian and Keeper of the
Pearl Banks (1842). On top of all that he became Police Magistrate in
Colombo in 1851. He died in England in 187o, aged 79.
Mainly thanks to connections which had been fostered by Joseph
with the important Madras firm of Arbuthnot & Co. (later Arbuthnot,
Latham & Co.), the business took shape at first along merchant
banking lines. Joseph died rather prematurely in 1843, and now at last
George Steuart appeared on the scene, and the business was established as George Steuart & Co. in the same year. George was yet
another ship's captain, commander of the Government steamer Seaforth. He is supposed to have been rather a tough case as a skipper,
but after some time ashore he came under the influence of the then
Bishop of Colombo, and was converted. The Captain Ahab touch
again!
For many years the company continued as a merchant bank but it
gradually built up its agency business. In George Steuart's day this
covered some 25 estates, but in the mid-186os there was a tremendous
'escalation' to over 65 estates with an acreage of about 34,000. Today
the firm represents over xoo,000 acres of plantation land.
After the retirement of George Steuart in 1863 (he lived on till
1896) the partners, and later the directors, tended to be drawn from
the planting community. The firm itself did actually own estates from
time to time (e.g. Hyndford and Wallokellie, in Ambagamuwa, during
the 187os), but one imagines that this was for temporary financial
reasons rather than because they had any intention of setting up as
planters. In fact, the strict rulewas early established, and is still maintained, that 'none of the partners of the firm shall hold any interest
of their own as proprietors of any land or plantations'.
An agency house, then, pure and simple, and what does such a
concern actually do for its clients, the estate-owning companies? One
could give a long and ponderous answer to this, but everything really
falls under two heads the supervision of the estates and the disposal
of the crop.
The second of these two functions brings in a lot of other people
whom we shall meet in the next chapter, but the first is highly
specialised and self-contained. It revolves to a considerable extent
round that potent figure, the Visiting Agent, or 'V.A.'. A whole book
could be written about the V.A.s of Ceylon. As Sir Thomas Villiers
points out, the V.A. originally owed his tremendous prestige to the
131

awkward mechanism of coffee-growing and the need (on which we
have commented earlier) to finance the crop. This led to a system
whereby 'the output for the coming season was estimated shortly
after the trees had blossomed, and the berry still green, and on the
strength of this estimate, the agent made arrangements for. an
advance, either direct or through a local bank or a financial house in
London'. Sir Thomas then explains:
Tor this work . . . experienced valuers were required, and thus we
find the leading men in the coffee industry being invited to form themselves into a mercantile firm; and from this again grew the system of
appointing Visiting Agents, whose work was not so much to advise on
the management and cultivation of the estates but to estimate the amount
of credit that could be given to the proprietor. Estates were also constantly changing hands, and the Visiting Agent was called in on behalf
of the vendor or the purchasing party to value the property. This
involved considerable responsibility, and the services of reliable visiting
agents were keenly competed for by the agency firms.
Later, with the collapse of coffee and the change to tea giving rise to
every kind of credit problem, this function of the V.A. as valuer again
became crucial, and it was only when the industry steadied down to
its long period of fairly stable prosperity after about 1890 that the job
became predominantly one of advising and reporting. For this,
practical experience 'on the garden' was essential, and thenceforward
the ideal V.A. was an efficient planter rather than expert valuer. Not
surprisingly, the history of George Steuart after the disappearance
of the founding brothers contains many outstanding examples of the
classical sequence: Planter Visiting Agent Partner in Agency often with a final phase as Director of Tea Companies at home.
One of the first of these influential characters was William Anderson, who was managing the famous Rothschild Estate when he was
appointed V.A. in 1868, becoming a partner in 1875. He was succeeded by Thomas S. Grigson from Hunasgeria (even larger than
Rothschild) and he in turn, after an interval of office work, was
admitted to partnership in 1885. The name of Grigson comes up at
every turn during the coffee crisis period, as another member of the
family, Edward S. (formerly a planter in Nilambe and Maskeliya)
became V.A. in 188o, and no doubt it was largely the expertise of
these two men which brought George Steuart through those anxious
years not only intact but with its position enhanced.
Such was the rise of one agency house. That the steady upward
curve we have traced was exceptional, if not unique, will be made
132

clear if we follow as succinctly as we can the fortunes of the seven
largest firms of agents as they existed in 1883, just before the debacle
of the Oriental Banking Corporation. They were:
Estates Acres
Sabonadiere & Co. 113 28,546
J. M. Robertson & Co. 81 26,507
George Steuart & Co. 86 25450
Whittall & Co. 85 22,443
Alston, Scott & Co. 68 16,956
Mackwood & Co. 79 16,248
The Ceylon Co. 38 14,43o
The agency house at the top of the list, SABONADIERE & Co.,
had a remarkable, though in the end nearly disastrous history. There
were two brothers Sabonadiere, sons of a French Protestant pastor,
and with connections through their mother with the Channel Islands.
Their father offspring one would think of philoprogenitive but
thwarted parents had been christened Carey Charles Alfred Mary
Louisa Jean Antoine, but opted for a simple Francis Richard when
his own eldest son was born at Meaux in 1823. F. R. (Trank') was one
of the authentic, grass-roots coffee-men, since he started life in
Ceylon at the age of 16 on the historic pioneering estate Black Forest
in Pussellawa, under H. C. Byrde, who was a relative of his mother. It
was in 1852, after some service elsewhere, that he was chosen by
Baron Delmar to develop the Delta property close to Black Forest,
which he did so effectively that it became one of the largest and best
equipped in Central Ceylon. The second brother, William Augustus,
writes with pride about the venture in his interesting book The Coffee
Planter of Ceylon,' claiming for Frank the `cudos' of having erected
on East Delta buildings with which 'there are few to compare in
efficiency, beauty and completeness' (among other things Delta was
said to be the first estate which had a bungalow with a shingled roof
instead of a talipot-palm-thatched hut!)
Close by, in addition to Black Forest, was Rothschild, developed,
as we know long before William Anderson's time by the Worms
brothers; striking that two such grand and progressive Ceylon estates
should have been operated respectively by French and German
families!
Then came one of those intricate financial crises which readers
1 Guernsey,
Mackenzie Son & Le Patourel, 1866.
133

of this book must by now be coming to expect. It involved the Dicksons, originators of the well-known firm of Dickson, Anderson & Co.
One of them, Thomas Dickson, had retired from Ceylon in 1861,
letting the agency house of Dickson, Tatham & Co. pass to his
Tatham partner. Business troubles ensued, there was a long mid
expensive lawsuit which ended up in the House of Lords, and Frank
Sabonadiere was invited to take over the shattered remains. This he
did with immense success under the style of Sabonadiere & Co., and
with the Oriental Bank behind him he reached the top position.
Among the planters who backed him were the Elphinstones, who at
one time had over thirty estates with the agency.
It will be noted, however, that though they headed the total acreage
table, the average size of the Sabonadiere estates was considerably
smaller than their next competitors', and this may well have been a
source of weakness. But the main trouble was their close association
with the Oriental Bank, and when that went down it inevitably took
Sabonadiere and Co. with it. Frank and his partner W. Bowden Smith
were declared bankrupt, and the entire business might have dissolved
but for prompt action by one of their assistants, Harry Cumberbatch,
who took it over under the name of Cumberbatch & Co. After some
anxious passages the firm succeeded, and in fact carried on prosperously up to our own time and until an amalgamation in 1947 with
Carson & Co. (The latter company, now known as Carson, Cumberbatch & Co., had been started in the 186os mainly to import Manchester piece-goods, took on a few agencies, became involved more and
more in tea through its association with the Bibby Line, and in 1913
was the first Colombo agency house to become a limited liability
company.)
Portraits of the period show Frank Sabonadiere as neatly bearded
and rather mondaine-looking, like a member of the Jockey Club de
Paris. William on the other hand, with his small spectacles, mutton
chops and fierce expression, would have made a convincing Victorian
headmaster.
Second to Sabonadiere and Co. comes J. M. ROB ERTSON & Co.
More drama here! And once more, solid commercial values salvaged
from financial collapse. The story indeed bridges both the early (1847)
coffee crisis, the 1885 crisis and a special exterior crisis five years later.
Let no one ever say that the Colombo trade had it too easy!
The fascination of J. M. Robertson lies in the fact that it was from
the very first tied to the fortunes of the great house of Baring Brothers,
the only London merchant bankers of importance who consistently
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invested in the planting industry of Ceylon. Very little was known
about the story until recently, but the correspondence and accounts
preserved in the Baring Brothers archives throw much new light on
how coffee and later tea was actually financed.
Before the foundation of J. M. Robertson & Co., Baring Brothers
had been represented in Ceylon by a character called Frank Hudson.
He went into partnership with Nicholas Chandler, one of those exship's captains who pervade this chapter; we have already met the
firm of Hudson, Chandler & Co. trying to establish an English farm
on Sinnapitiya. There was unsoundness of some kind about Frank
Hudson; the story of his downfall is told in Villiers' Mercantile Lorel.
and need not be elaborated here.
While Hudson was still in command, Barings had evidently felt
they must have someone on the spot upon whom they could rely, and
in 1848 sent out a young man called J. Murray Robertson, son of the
agent to the Baring estate of Stratton in Hampshire. He had already
represented them in South America. He found a highly disturbing
situation not only in the affairs of Hudson, Chandler but in Colombo
generally 'not a shilling of ready money in the hands of anyone in
the Island' (it was still the aftermath of the Bank collapse of 1847).
Robertson, however, took a firm grip and within two or three weeks
of making his landfall at Galle (2 April 1848) he was sending home
detailed reports, financial statements and recommendations. Things
quickly began to go better and soon the name of Henry Bois, member
of a famous Colombo family which we shall meet again, appears as a
partner. Others who made reputations for themselves at J. M. Robertson & Co. were George Christian and J. T. White. Barings themselves
took a keen interest in their Ceylon commitments, members of the
family came out at intervals to inspect, and in later years one of them
became a resident partner. Some aspects, of wider significance, of the
connection between Baring Bros. and J. M. Robertson & Co. are
dealt with in Appendix II. After Baring Bros. withdrew in the early
18gos, J. M. Robertson & Co. went on its way as an active agency
house under the direction of successive members of the Bois family.
In 1957 there was an amalgamation with George Steuart & Co.
The latter, which happens to be the third on our list, we need not
linger over; the fourth, WHITTALL & Co., we have already met in
connection with Loolecondera and the confused fortunes of the firm
of Keir, Dundas & Co. It had actually been started by James Whittall,
a retired partner in the celebrated eastern merchants, Jardine
1 Colombo, Ceylon Observer, x94o.
135

Matheson & Co., who came out in 188o to look after their interests in
Ceylon.
Whittalls were fortunate in stepping in when the worst of the
Oriental Bank storm had blown out, and with expert management the
firm made fine strides, being particularly associated with the rubber
boom of the Edwardian period. The owner by then was W. H. Figg,
father of the future leader of the Colombo community, Sir Clifford
Figg, who himself started work with the firm in 1911.
At that time
the London end of the business was looked after by Alexander
Thomson, who was shortly joined by George H. Alston, a Colombo
partner since 1894, thus forming the still active firm of Thomson,
Alston & Co. and leading us neatly forward to our fifth company,
ALSTON, SCOTT & Co.
This was launched by J. B. Alston and Alex. Scott in 1848, just at
the close of Coffee Slump No. 1. After various permutations, in
which the Glasgow firm of Campbell, Rivers & Co. were involved,
they began to build up an important agency business as well as
actually owning some very well-known estates. Once more we see
trouble looming in the '8os, though with the slight variation that
disaster did not actually strike till 1891, with the closure both of
Alston, Scott and Campbell, Rivers. Fortunately, as with Thomas
Cumberbatch in the Sabonadiere crisis, there were people on the spot
ready to take quick action. On the very day of the smash, 14 July
1891, and immediately under the notice of Alston, Scott's suspension
of payment, appeared the following almost heroic announcement:
With reference to the above notice we have this day commenced business
as Merchants and Commission Agents under the name and style of
BOIS BROTHERS AND CO.
Percy Bois
Stanley Bois.
The Bois family again! Percy and Stanley were in fact junior partners
in the firm and it was not long before the new business was building
up the Agency side as well as many other activities.
With MACKWOOD & Co. we are back among the sea captains. And
a very long way back. The family connection with Ceylon can be
traced to at least the '3os, when William Mackwood was Master and
F. Mackwood Second Mate of the good ship Iris, owned by Tindall
& Co. William Tindall not only carried in his ships 'nine-tenths of
the cargo and nearly all the passengers' who came from Europe to
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Ceylon in the 18405, but he was an exceedingly early purchaser of
Crown lands and opener-up of coffee estates. Some of these have
remained in the possession of his descendants till this day, with
Mackwoods always as agents, and never a written contract!
1833 is the first year in which there is any record of the Mackwood
brothers steering the Iris into Colombo Harbour, though they were
there on numerous occasions afterwards. However, came a day in
1841 when Captain William Mackwood arrived in Colombo as a
passenger in the Symmetry (Master, Abel Mackwood, his cousin).
William brought his family with him and evidently intended to stay.
In fact only four days later there appeared in the press another of
those wonderfully laconic manifestoes:
The undersigned has this day commenced business as Merchant and Agent
WM. MACKWOOD
And from that moment until the year 1956 the firm was carried on
by members of the family in unbroken succession, surviving all the
troubles which time was to bring. There is nothing like space to tell
the full story, but it is worth remarking that though Mackwoods have
always had a flourishing agency business, they are quite different from
George Steuart, for example, in being important planters in their
own right. Almost the first thing that old Captain Mackwood did
after 'hanging out his shingle' in Colombo was to set off up country
with his friend Judge Temple to look at possible coffee lands. And
sure enough on 3 November 1842 came the Crown grant of Cottagalla
Estate, Kadugannawa, to be held in the joint names of William
Mackwood, Abel Mackwood and Christopher Temple. It remained
on the register as owned by `Mackwood and Temple' for decades (it
is now a rubber estate). Other family properties acquired in the very
early days were Guava Hill (also in Kadugannawa), the vast GalIebodde and Mastnawatte in Dickoya Lower, and Maddakellie in the
Knuckles District.
So year by year more young Mackwoods came out to join the
business; after World War II, however, fewer active participants
were available and finally the famous old concern was sold to its
present Ceylonese owners. Headed by Mr N. S. 0. Mendis, they
carry it on along its customary lines.
The final name on our list, the CEYLON COMPANY, has a special
interest for us, as it is yet another link with those seminal characters,
the Worms Brothers. We have already met them repeatedly as plan137

ters and tea pioneers; now they come forward in a capacity which
seems somehow more in harmony with their Frankfurt ancestry,
namely as Colombo merchants. They were already in the financial
swim before they turned up in Ceylon. Their elder brother Baron de
Worms was a dignified figure in London and Paris; Maurice started
life on the London Stock Exchange; Gabriel was a merchant in Paiis
till the July Revolution of 1832 upset him and he followed his brother
to England. This very 'Rothschild' pattern did not endure Maurice
got wanderlust, went on a world tour, liked the look of Ceylon, settled
there in 1841, bought forest land in Pussellawa, sent for brother
Gabriel. So arose the firm of 'G. and M. B. Worms', with 'G'
managing the Grandpass Mills and the shipping business, and `114.B.'
triumphing in coffee and rather fiddling about with tea up at Rothschild.
Mention of Grandpass, by the way, is a reminder that the management of vast establishments where the coffee went through its final
processes before shipment (see Chapter 2) was a very important and
lucrative part of agency house business in the early days; 'our Mills
at so-and-so' invariably formed part of the assets which staggered
from one ownership to another in times of crisis.
Not that anything like that ever happened to the assets of the
Worms Brothers. Prudent, benevolent, rich, the very pattern of the
great Jewish merchant, Gabriel moved with dignified dexterity
through the troubled waters of 1847, while Maurice extended their
planting interest until by 1863, when they decided to retire from
Ceylon, they owned twelve splendid properties in various districts.
The largest of these was certainly Hopewell-Hunugalla, over 2,0o0
acres in Dimbula, but it seems to have been merely an investment in
forest land, later absorbed into Wattegodde and Meddecombra.
Other big properties were the 904 acres of 'Worms-Badulla' as it was
rather oddly called (the later Keenakelle) and Condegalla (of China
tea fame) in Ramboda. In all, then, 7,318 great big beautiful acres
and fully worth, we are sure, the 157,000 which the brothers took
away with them Maurice to set up as a country gentleman in
Warwickshire and Gabriel to secure a pied-a-terre in Bond Street.
The disposal of their assets (Colombo mills, etc., in addition to the
estates) was managed by their financial adviser George Smyttan Duff
of the Oriental Bank. More or less under the latter's auspices a new
organisation was set up in London with three-quarters of a million
capital and the lordly even slightly presumptuous title of the
Ceylon Company. The Chairman was Lawford Acland and the only
138

really conspicuous Ceylon name on the Board was that of Sir James
Emerson Tennent. An office was opened in Colombo, of course, with
J. L. Bell as Manager and the respected William Rollo and John
Tyndall as Visiting Agents. All might have gone well but for three
things a long, extravagantly costly lawsuit (Corbet v. The Ceylon
Co., Ltd.) which they lost; Hemileia vastatrix (already only five years
away); and the forethought of the Oriental Bank in unloading on to
the new concern, not only its Ceylon properties, but what were then
some highly unprofitable sugar estates in Mauritius. Losses on the
latter, combined with the Oriental Bank's own failure, brought about
the final liquidation (see Appendix H). The Ceylon assets passed to
what became the well-known firm of The Eastern Produce and Estates
Co.
So much for our 'big seven'. But not far behind them in size in
1883 were five more companies which, as it happens, nearly round off
our picture of the Colombo agency house scene, as it was and to a
large extent, still is. They were: Lee Hedges & Co., Bosanquet & Co.,
Leechman & Co., Colombo Commercial Company and Carey,
Strachan & Co. I will try to summarise their, as usual, somewhat
tortuous histories.
LEE HEDGES & Co. One of the oldest of the agency houses, having
been founded by W. D. Lee in 1857 no Hedges till 1866. In their
earliest days they were perhaps even more important as mill-owners
than as estate agents. As late as the 189os their Colpetty premises
in Colombo bore the reverberant title of `Kollupitiya Coffee Curing
Mills, Cinnamon Press, Tea Factory and Desiccated Coconut Manufactory'. On the agency side the foundation of their fortunes was
their connection with the Bousteads. In the little world of the British
in Ceylon, no less than among the Ceylonese themselves, `family' has
always meant a lot, and the Bousteads can certainly claim a few lines
from us. The first of the name to enter the country was John
Boustead who took up a commission in the Ceylon Rifles in 1808.
He luckily obtained some 'interest' with Sir John Wilson, the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, whose ventures into coffee lands we
noticed earlier, and when Sir John died in 1857, leaving the succession
to his estates in obscurity and dispute, he nominated John Boustead's
son, John Melvill, as his trustee. So the entry 'Heirs of the late Sir
John Wilson', which long appeared against such estates as New Peacock
and Nilambe, represents in fact a Boustead responsibility. J. M.
himself, however, was a London merchant, partner in Price, Boustead
& Co., who under their original name of Price & Co. had the distinc139

tion of selling the first coffee sent to London by H. C. Byrde from
Black Forest. Lee Hedges represented Price, Boustead in Colombo;
when the latter firm failed in 1879, J. M. Boustead came out to look
after the Boustead estates and became a partner in the agency. He
remained with them until 1885 and in the following year formed his
own company, Boustead Brothers, taking with him of course the
agency for the Boustead Estates and for those old Wilson properties.
It is typical of the extraordinary continuity of the Colombo trade that
to this day the agency for Peacock and Nilambe (Ceylon) Tea and
Rubber Estates Ltd. is in the hands of Whittall Boustead Ltd. (see
page 141).
Another well-known firm whose birthplace, so to speak, was Lee
Hedges' office, was GORDON FRAZER & Co. It was started by two of
the assistants, Dalziel Buchanan and Gordon Frazer (an ex-Mincing
Lane man). Buchanan later moved off, and at the turn of the century
the name was changed from Buchanan Frazer & Co. to Gordon
Frazer & Co.
Lee Hedges themselves soldiered on, with the flotation of rubber
companies as one of their more conspicuous later activities, and were
eventually taken over by Shaw Wallace & Co., Colombo off-shoot
of a leading Calcutta house.
BOSANQUET & Co. As it happens this firm has shared the destiny
of Boustead & Co. by becoming linked with Whittall & Co., though
only after an earlier amalgamation with Skrine & Co. I am glad it
comes into our 1883 review because it was the direct descendant
of a very great agency house killed off by the coffee crash, namely
George Wall & Co. This, of course, was the creation of George Wall,
himself perhaps the most dynamic leader the planters of Ceylon ever
had.
Wall was essentially a Kandy man and because this is mainly a
Colombo chapter we ought not to forget that in the early days Kandy
was the hub of the planters' own world and had at least two potent
agency houses, Keir, Dundas and George Wall. Subsequently the
latter moved his main office to Colombo and with Captain Jolly (first
Chairman of the Planters' Association) and Alexander Harper among
his partners, built up an impressive agency and import/export
business.
One of the most hard-done-by victims of Hemileia vastatrix was
certainly George Wall. The firm suspended payment in August 1879,
but as we have seen so often before, a junior member of it stepped in to
salvage the remains. This time it was the Visiting Agent, R. A.
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Bosanquet, backed by W. F. Courthorpe, owner of some of the 'Wall'
estates. For a short time the new firm was called Courthorpe, Bosanquet & Co., but the Courthorpe element vanished in 1881 and J. H.
Renton (whom we shall meet later in the tea propaganda world)
became a partner. Another Bosanquet, W. D., became Visiting
Agent. Meanwhile in 188o a firm called Skrine Fort & Co. had been
started in Colombo by two planters, Duncan Skrine and Geoffrey
Fort, with a third associate, H. Baldwin. The business soon became
a Skrine family affair, Duncan being joined by his cousin Edward
and in due course by his sons, A. D. and R. H., and the firm was
known as Skrine & Co. until the Bosanquet amalgamation (1930).
For the record, it was in 1957 that Whittall & Co., Ltd., took over
the entire business of Boustead Bros. and, so that an historic name
might be preserved, changed its style to Whittall Boustead Ltd.; the
working integration with Bosanquet & Skrine followed two years
later.
LEECHMAN & CO. had quite different beginnings from any of
the others so far. Candles! It all started with a concern called the
Hultsdorf Mills Co., formed in about 1835 by David Wilson, whose
brother ran what was to become 'Price's Patent Candle Co.' in
Battersea, the intention being obviously to supply the latter with
their raw material. Later a Price's Candles man called Ritchie came
out, a new company was formed under the name of Wilson, Ritchie
and the firm was soon on its way as a very big oil-pressing and soapmaking concern. They had a sawmill too at Halmilla for producing
their packaging material, with elephants to carry the logs floated
down the Kelani River. In spite of this imposing labour force, the
firm unfortunately went bankrupt in 1865 and the following year two
brothers, G. B. and W. C. Leechman, took over on behalf of the
merchant bankers Anthony Gibbs & Sons.
Oil seeds and fertilisers continued to be the staple products, but
in 1886 a separate business was set up to develop an estate side, with
another Leechman (Christopher) coming in to help. Within ten years
the name was appearing in the ownership as well as the agency
columns of the Estates Directory and there was a big export connection
too. A mixed agency house, then, but a thriving one.
This applies with even more pertinence to the next on our list
COL OMB 0 COMMERCIAL COMPANY. While it does seem to have
been started mainly to handle agency work, the engineering genius
of its founder John Brown brought its machinery side into even
greater prominence, as we have already seen. Another point which
141

set Colombo Commercial a little apart was that (like the Ceylon
Company) it was not a Colombo house in the strict sense, having
been registered in London, but as agents over an immense period
(eighty years in some cases) for such famous companies as Spring
Valley Ceylon Estates Ltd., Ouvah Ceylon Estates, etc., it grew into
the fabric of the Colombo trade.'
Last come CAREY, STRACHAN & CO. The rather tragic history of
this concern, as told in Villiers' Some Pioneers of the Tea Industry,
can now be supplemented from the Baring correspondence. It
emerged from a mesh of family alliances involving the Rudds as well
as the Strachans and Careys. Briefly, the Strachans were already
active in Ceylon when Laurence St George Carey, brother-in-law of
Charles Strachan (whose father was J. L., the engineer) decided to
enter the planting field in a big way.
According to Villiers, he was a copper magnate, and copper being
then a rising market he bought another coffee estate every time the
price rose a few points. But a letter from J. Murray Robertson Junr.
to Baring Bros. (4 May 1877) reveals that in fact Carey's original
investment was only about z,000 to L3,00o; all the rest was done on
borrowed money, to be paid back by annual instalments out of
profits on the crops. In this way no fewer than 47 estates were
acquired and in 1873 the agency house of Carey, Strachan & Son was
started, mainly to look after them. But within two years Laurence
St George Carey was dead at the age of only 27 and owing nearly half
a million pounds. Some of the estates were quickly sold off, at good
prices, and the debt reduced to 255,000. By 1877, Carey, Strachan
would have liked to withdraw from Ceylon altogether and hand over
the whole agency to J. M. Robertson & Co. (hence the correspondence
with Baring Bros.). But some of the estates were in the hands of
Bosanquet, Carter & Co. and Finlay, Campbell & Co. jointly 'and
they prefer working the account to his paying them off' an illuminating touch, since it shows that the profitable management of coffee
was still possible even at that late stage.
Litigation added to the problems, and the final outcome was that
of all the 47 estates only Pingarawa, bought on Carey's last visit to
Ceylon and registered in his wife's name, was left to the family.
The agency carried on, however, and eventually evolved into the
Galaha Company (see page 156).
The Ceylon agency business has now been transferred to Consolidated Commercial Agencies, a Ceylon-registered company, for which Colombo Commercial
are Managing Agents.
\I
142

Such were the agency houses most prominent eighty years ago, but
one more we must mention. Though it had already disappeared by
then, it belongs to Colombo history in a way which no other agency
can quite match. I refer to ACLAND & BOYD. It would be worth
bringing in anyway because it completes, with George Steuart and
Mackwood, a trinity of agency houses started by mariners. I was
going to say by sea captains; but while George Hay Boyd had certainly skippered the Mary East Indiaman, I am not sure how far
George Acland actually got in the Indian Marine.
In any case, from the moment they set up in business in 1829 the
texture becomes thick. Just to nibble at the surface: William, the most
famous of the Rudds, joined as engineer of their Coconut Oil Mills
in 1832, and two years later became assistant to the pioneer George
Bird on Kondesalle; these estates expanded and soon John Capper
(that master of Dickensian English) turns up as a junior; William
Rudd is moved on to open other Acland & Boyd estates, including
Haloya in Hantane, where the assistant is John Gavin; two characters
called E. J. Darley and Samuel Butler emerge in the piece-goods
department in Colombo and the planting side respectively; then
arrives a new engineer, J. L. Strachan; and when a coffee-man is
imported from Jamaica it turns out to be Robert Boyd Tytler!
But in 1847 came coffee crash No. I, and as the explosion of a
heavenly body heaves fragments of all sizes into orbit, so this terrestial
'quake' started Darley and Butler as agents on their own account
(Darley, Butler & Co., an important house, but no longer powerful in
tea); John Gavin gravitated to Keir, Dundas; we know what happened
to the Strachans and to J. M. Tytler; John Capper launched off on a
dazzling series of careers in which the management of companies in
Colombo and Calcutta alternated with journalism in Colombo and
London and finally in his ownership of the Ceylon Times; and no
doubt many minor planets and asteroids, untraced by this astronomer,
were also set in motion. George Boyd seems to have retired before
the smash took place, as the partners then were Acland, Butler and
Capper (on probation!); later Acland became a millowner in Calcutta,
where he died in 1867.
Yet even now, our Colombo picture is still far from complete; it
takes more than a group of local agency houses, however close-knit,
to provide a balanced mercantile community.
The 'eastern merchant' is a very old phenomenon in the world.
Without bothering about Chaldeans and the like, we can trace him
back to the earliest contacts between China and Europe, and indeed
143

between East and West generally. Sometime he is an indigenous
magnate sitting stately (and occasionally cross-legged) in booth or
godown or hong, but concealing beneath his turban and silk robe a
nice appreciation of bills of exchange; sometimes the term is applied
to his opposite number, the substantial figure in wig and kneebreeches with whom he is doing business. Both kinds flourished in
Ceylon, long before a twig of tea or even of coffee had sprung from
the island's soil. The European element we have already met, and we
at least caught a glimpse of the other in those `Chetties' and 'Moormen' who Capper records as having squeezed all residents out of the
Fort by the 184os. The Chetties were and to a much diminished
extent are the great middlemen of Ceylon, traders and financiers of
Indian descent, and even when orthodox banking became a commonplace, they went on acting as paymasters, safe-deposits and men of
affairs to British businessmen and tea planters right up to our own
time. The `Moormen' (descendants of old Muslim settlers) operated,
on the whole, on a less ambitious level, but also helped to keep the
trade wheels turning.
All this was pleasantly self-contained, and it was many years before
another type of 'eastern merchant' altogether broke into the family
circle. A European type once more, but more cosmopolitan than
anything seen so far in Colombo. I refer to the great international
mercantile houses which, starting out usually from China or India,
rapidly ringed the whole Indian Ocean basin with their branches and then moved into even wider spheres. The first of them to set up
in Colombo was JAMES FINLAY & Co. and it is rather surprising
that the date should have been so late as 1893. Finlays, as is fairly
well known, had started as textile manufacturers near Glasgow in the
eighteenth century and only began dealing in eastern produce as a
kind of reciprocal merchandise to the cotton piece-goods they exported in such quantities to India and elsewhere. They seem to have
flourished in Ceylon from the word 'go', taking up large blocks of
forest land and registering important estate-owning companies, of
which one of the earliest was Consolidated Tea and Lands.
Not far behind Finlays were HARRISONS & CROSFIELD, but here
the pattern was different. Until their tea buyer, Arthur Lampard,
came to Ceylon in 1895, they had been mainly China tea merchants
in Liverpool, and later in the city of London. Lampard was a dynamic
character. He had just been to Moscow to discuss with a group of
wealthy customers the idea of importing Ceylon tea direct into Russia
through the port of Odessa, and this proposition had caught on. This
144

led to an agency house being started in Colombo with the title of
Lampard, Crosfield & Co.; after operating for a while under the
wing of the Colombo Commercial Co. a small mill was bought and
an office set up. This was used by Lampard as the base for forays into
neighbouring countries and continents, whence sprang all the vast
overseas interests of the parent firm. 'H. & C.' operations in modern
Ceylon cover the whole spectrum from estate management to export.
Before we carry the story of the Colombo trade into the phases of
selling and shipping the crop, a word is needed about the London
end of the agency house system, and the tea companies which in a
particularly intimate way it serves.
In the first chapter of this book we saw that, apart from a growing
class of Ceylonese proprietary planters, the ownership of the Ceylon
tea estates is divided between rupee and sterling companies, with
their headquarters respectively in Colombo or the U.K. (London as a
rule). Their number is a little indeterminate, since it depends on how
many one includes of the tea-cum-rubber companies, in which the
size of the tea component obviously varies. But at a rough computation there are some So sterling and 7o rupee companies whose main
interest is tea-growing in Ceylon. And since in a general work of this
kind it is impossible to tell the story of 15o concerns individually, all
we will attempt is a broad look at their origins and their method of
functioning today.'
In size, Ceylon tea companies are a mixed bunch. Most of them
began as small affairs with less than 5o,000 capital, though there
were always a few giants which accounted for well over half of the
capital invested. They came into existence in two ways: A minority
were formed by adjacent owners (usually proprietary planters who
did not want to sell out on retirement) banding together to raise the
whole capital among themselves; more common were those in which
fresh capital was whipped up, so that the vendors were able to get a
bit of cash for their properties as well as shares. In the 18905 the
great age of tea company flotation the price paid per cultivated acre
varied from 20 up to as much as 100 in, for example, the best parts
of Upper Dimbula. Even allowing for some inflation by vendors who
wanted cash, this seems to make a contemporary (I 89 1) Ferguson
One of the few existing studies of the subject is Mr N. Rarnachandran's Foreign
Plantation Investment in Ceylon, 1889-1958 (Central Bank of Ceylon, 1963) and I
have drawn on this in the present chapter.
145

estimate of
per acre as the average value of all Ceylon's 25o,000
acres of plantations seem too low.
The raising of additional capital was done either by private
subscription or by public prospectus. In the former case relatives and
friends of the proprietary planters found the money or, if the circle
needed to be widened still further, tea merchants or agency holises
would be brought in. Thus nearly everyone concerned already had
some stake in the industry. In this sort of flotation the number of
shareholders tended to be small and their individual holdings substantial; for example, the Pundaluoya Company was financed by 24
people putting up an average of 4,000 apiece in &D shares.
When the additional capital required was around 40,000 or more,
there was usually a public issue by prospectus. Up to 1900 only 13
Ceylon companies had 'gone public' in this way, the first being the
Ceylon and Oriental Co. of 1892. Many still familiar names figure in
the list Dimbula Valley (1896), Central Province (1897) and
General Ceylon (1897), for example. It is an indication of the small
scale even of these public launchings that the total purchase consideration for the last named (k363,500) was twice that for the next
largest.
In all these issues, whether public or private, the predominant
theme was investment by private individuals rather than 'institutions'. In view of the erratic history of the Ceylon planting industry
up to about 189o, this can hardly be wondered at!
Even after two, tea company finance continued on the same
conservative lines. During the 19oos, of course, it was completely
overshadowed by the excitements of rubber company flotation. The
latter differed radically from the older industry in that most of the
rubber flotations were carried out by syndicates or investment trusts
formed for the purpose. Tea capital continued to be raised by the
issue of further shares to existing holders rather than by public
subscription. Indeed, the unit remained small; of the 150-odd Ceylon
tea companies (whether rupee or sterling) still in existence today, the
vast majority own either a single estate (though it has probably been
enlarged into a group) or two or three properties at the most; in the
case of the rupee companies (smaller on the whole than the sterling),
the amount of tea in bearing is often no more than goo to 1,50o acres.
All this goes far to explain why in London, no less than Ceylon,
tea companies have tended to form themselves into clusters, with an
agency house for nucleus, so that the apparent smallness of scale is
something of an illusion. Clearly it would be uneconomical for a 'one
146

estate' company to try and store, sell and ship its own small consignments of tea at Colombo, or to maintain secretarial and importing
arrangements in London. Thus has grown up the system of agencies
operating, in their differing ways, at each end of the pipeline. There
have been amalgamations among the London houses, no less than in
Colombo, and many of them act for Indian, African and other overseas producers as well as for their Ceylon connections.
Much interest, however, attaches to a few which belong profoundly
to the history of the Colombo trade. To take only two: EASTERN
PRODUCE (HOLDING) LTD., emerging from G. and M. B. Worms,
the Ceylon Company and the Eastern Produce and Estates Co., has
itself absorbed such agencies as James A. Hadden & Co. (whose progenitors engaged James Taylor), Robertson, Bois & Co. (the name
proclaims its Colombo origins) and Dickson, Anderson & Co. (harking back to Sabonadiere and Cumberbatch days.) With ARBUTHNOT
LATHAM & Co. we recall the ancient alliance between George
Steuart and Arbuthnots of Madras; its other associates Thomson,
Alston & Co. and the Ceylon and Eastern Agency (started in 1910 by
such old Colombo hands as William Forsythe, Sir Edward Rosling,
Joseph Fraser and Walter Shakspeare) are equally part of our Ceylon
saga.'
It is this system of Colombo and London agency houses, experts
both in trade and finance, acting as 'correspondents' for each other
that ensures the speed and efficiency with which the tea crop is in fact
handled on behalf of its numerous owners. The fabric may be traditional, but there is nothing old-fashioned about the machinery inside!
I The whole group was reconstituted under the name of Arbuthnot Agencies in
966.
Chapter 9
BUYERS AND SELLERS IN COLOMBO II

' "Lot No. zo!" shouts the broker, but his further words are
drowned by a hideous babel of shouts, yells, catcalls, squeals, grunts
and other noises, followed by only a second's silence when the fall
of the hammer is heard. . . .'
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 1885
ETWEEN 1873 (when the first shipment of 23 lb. from Loolecondera was recorded) and 1883, tea must have seemed very
much a minor item to the Colombo houses. It was treated in
much the same way as other merchandise either sold on the spot to
local merchants or to agents for foreign buyers, or warehoused pending shipment abroad on owner's account. Table 4 in Appendix IV,
however, shows how rapid was the build-up during the next decade.
For a long time, well over 90 per cent of the tea handled by the
agency houses was destined for London, and while this great preponderance gradually declined, the United Kingdom has never ceased
to be by far Ceylon's most important customer. But the efforts both
of merchants and publicists slowly opened up other markets. The
following table of 'Destinations' between 1883 and 1887 is illuminating it relates to shipping seasons, not calendar years:
1883-4
lb.
1884-5
lb.
1885-6
lb.
1886-7
lb.
United Kingdom 2,225,851 3,735,009 6,977,831 11,580,114

(98'37%) (98'39%) (9731%) (96'39%)
33,688

Hamburg
India and Eastwards 3,750 8,019 17,151 108,251
Australia
13,509 41,124 151,767 251,259
America
57 367 4,890 17,577
All Others
19,552 11,565 18,690 17,797
Total
2,262,719 3,796,084 7,170,329 12,008,686
By 1883 then, it was clear that a new product, with new requirements, was well on its way. It was also realised that because tea,
148

subject to seasonal variations and offering multifarious types and
grades, does not lend itself to bulk disposal or a 'futures' market,
Colombo would have to follow Mincing Lane and start selling by
public auction. The auspicious date was 3o July 1883, and the scene
the offices of Somerville & Co., Queen Street, Fort.
Since no sale catalogues or brokers' records appear to have survived
we must rely on Press reports of the event. Here is exactly what the
Ceylon Observer said the next morning:
`The first public sale of tea in Ceylon came off at the offices of Messrs
Somerville & Co. The result shows that there are buyers, but there is
still a considerable difference between sellers' and buyers' ideas of
prices, which will rectify itself. We congratulate Messrs Somerville on
being the first to start a local sale and trust there will be a long and
prosperous succession.'
Then follows the list of lots and prices, and a rum affair it is!
LOT I. 999 lb. Kabaragalla unassorted 45 cts.
in 5o lb. chests
LOT 2. 2240 lb. Agar's Land
Out at 5o cts.
in 40 lb. chests
43 cts. bid.
480 lb. Agar's Land
LOT 3.
in 40 lb. chests
LOT 4. 126o lb. Agar's Land
No bid
in 42 lb. chests
in z lb. pkts.
LoT 5. 540 lb. Oodawarra pekoe
in 99 lb. chests
30o Oodawarra BP
360 PS
450 Broken Mixed
Out at 5o cts.
45 cts. bid
31 Pt TY
So there we have it an auction sale of five lots only, about 14o

chests in all, and as the Observer hints, a considerable difference
between the price 'out' (i.e. the valuations) and the actual bids.
However, we also get from it a modest little 'honours list' of the first
marks ever sold by auction in Ceylon. Of the three estates concerned,
the teas of Kabaragalla, in Maturata, are still handled by Somerville
& co.; Agars Land (there is no apostrophe today) in the Balangoda
District and Oodawarra (Oodoowerre) near Badulla now appear in
the catalogues of other firms. It is interesting that nobody seems to
have liked the Agars Land offer of 1 chests filled with z-lb. packets!
149

In spite of the Observer's kindly good wishes we suspect that this
inaugural auction fell flat at any rate, there is no record of further
sales until the first half of 1885, when there was a revival on a small
scale. By 29 July the catalogue (this was a Forbes & Walker one) had
crept up to 54 lots. The marks represented included Dunedin,
Abergeldie and Springwood.
8 August was much more ambitious, with Somerville, Forbes &
Walker and Robinson' all selling. The catalogue, however, still had a
ragged look, and purchasers must have been chancing their arms a bit
when they gave 66 cents all round for an Atherfield lot consisting of
Ioo lb. Broken Pekoe, 1,o8o Pekoe, 1,35o Pekoe Souchong, 5,000
Broken and 6o Dust; or 57 cents for an invoice from Cyprus Estate
which included six different grades plus a couple of chests of Red
Leaf! At any rate, things were brisk enough for a correspondent to
write a Letter to the Editor suggesting it was time to formulate
conditions of sale in particular, ought not brokers to indicate
whether there was a reserve price or not? He also objected to buyers
having to accept 'garden weights', as it was well known that the
contents of chests changed in weight even on the way to Colombo.
The Observer thereupon published its own draft Conditions of Sale.
Just when official Conditions were adopted we do not know, but
by the time the Colombo Tea Traders'Association was formed in 5894
one of its first undertakings was to revise a set already in force. The
auctions had by then developed on normal Mincing Lane lines, with a
multiplicity of lots differentiated by grades as well as marks. In the
early days they were held either in the brokers' own offices or at
various commercial salerooms, but by 1894 they were being conducted under Ceylon Chamber of Commerce auspices.
The Colombo Tea Traders' Association itself was, in fact, a
Chamber of Commerce offshoot. It was modelled on the similar
Association already existing in Calcutta, and its stated aim was to
'promote the common interests of sellers and buyers of tea in the
Colombo market'. In order to preserve impartiality, it was decided
that the first committee should consist of one Chamber of Commerce
representative, three sellers, three buyers and three brokers. Sales
today are usually held on Mondays and Tuesdays, except when they
happen to coincide with a Poya Holiday.2 The selling brokers, who
1 Probably
J. D. Robinson, a produce-broker of the period.

Since r January 1966 the Buddhist Poya Days have taken the place of Sundays
as holidays in the Ceylon calendar. Being dependent on the phases of the moon,
they may occur on any day of the week.
150

wield the hammer in turn, dispose of millions of pounds of tea with
incredible rapidity (Plate 2th).
So now it is time to add a catalogue of brokers (the correct collective
noun?) to our roll of Colombo pioneers.
SOMERVILLE & C o., as the doyens, must come first. The founder
was W. Somerville, an assistant in the firm of Fowlie, Richmond &
Co., which had arisen from the ruin of Nichol, Cargill & Co., and
which in turn had to liquidate in 1875. But Somerville & Co. can
also claim to be the birthplace, so to speak, of another famous broking
concern FORBES & WALKER LTD. James Forbes came out to
Ceylon in 1876, and by 1881 was a salaried partner in Somervilles.
The head of the firm refusing to admit Forbes as a partner on equal
terms, the latter took himself off and went into partnership with
George Chapman Walker, whose own employers, Armitage Bros.,
had had their failure some time before. Now James Forbes was a
qualified Mincing Lane tea-taster, the first to turn up in a Colombo
broking house, so that gave his saleroom a head start when the tea
boom really got going. Forbes and Walker still occupy the leading
position, in rubber as well as tea broking, with a Grigson (J. B. W.)
of the old Colombo family, at the head of affairs.
Two other firms, E. John & Co., and Keell & Waldock, have now
been absorbed into the concern called J 0 RN, KEELL, THOMPSON,
WHITE & Co. a significant title since it incorporates also the names
of two London brokers. This idea of a direct link between Mincing
Lane and the Fort has been around for quite a long time, the first
instance being when George White & Co. of London went into
partnership with Wilton Bartleet, a former Delmege Forsyth man.
This arrangement lasted till 1912, after which B ART EET & Co. continued on its own; it is now under Ceylonese management. Somerville
& Co. provided the next example Patrick Gow of Gow Wilson and
Stanton & Co., acquired a major holding in the firm in 1911, the
name was changed to Gow, Somerville & Co., and so remained till the
death of Patrick Gow in 1929. The London link was then broken and
Forbes & Walker in turn entered into a working arrangement with a
group of seven London brokers which included Gow Wilson and
Stanton as well as Wilson, Smithett & Co., and other well-known
names.
To return to the component parts of John, Keell, Thompson, White
& Co., the firm of E. John & Co. was founded in the 187os by the
brothers George & Edwin John, of whom the former had been in
business in Colombo even earlier. The member of the family, howI51

ever, who deserves a special salute from any writer on commercial
Ceylon was Reginald, because on his death in 1928 he bequeathed to
Sir Thomas Villiers' a vast collection of manuscript notes and photographs relating to the old Colombo firms. This formed the basis of
Villiers' Mercantile Lore, upon which I in turn have drawn heavily in
the previous and the present chapter. 'Keel!' stands for Keel! &
Waldock Ltd., whose founders, like James Forbes, had had a Somerville background. 'White' and 'Thompson' of course represent the
two London broking houses, George White & Co. and W. J. & H.
Thompson, who have been connected with the sale of Ceylon tea for
so long.
So much for the men on the rostrum. In the body of the kirk, so
to speak, sit the representatives of the agency houses,2 of exporting
firms, both Ceylonese and European, and of great wholesalers and
packers all over the world. There are no buying brokers as in London,
though their place is taken in some respects by buying agents, of whom
HEATH & Co. have perhaps the longest history they were started in
1897 as the Colombo branch of a China tea house called Rodewald &
Co. Very large purchasers today, for the Middle East markets in
particular, are such firms as HEBTULABHOY & CO. and JAFFERJEE
BROS. The former, established in Colombo for several generations,
began shipping tea abroad in 1907; the latter, a more recent off-shoot
of an old family business, dispatched tea for the first time to Bahrain
in 1954.
Conspicuous also in the auction room, however, are the buyers for
three great concerns whose position is altogether different from any
of those so far mentioned. They represent a determined effort towards
the end of the last century by retail businesses in the U.K. to obtain a
footing at production level, and so wide is their scope that they could
have appeared in the previous chapter among the estate owners and
agents as fittingly as in the present one as buyers. I refer to LIPTON
LTD., the ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH JOINT C.W.S. and BROOKE
BOND CEYLON LTD.
It is a curious thought that of all the human beings mentioned in

this loo years' history, the only one whose name has ever been identi1 Thomas Lister Villiers arrived in Ceylon in 1887. After much planting experience he became the owner of Dickoya Estate in isloi and a partner in the firm of
George Steuart & Co. in 1906. Always active in public life, he was a member of the
Legislative Council (1924-31) and of the State Council (1931-2). He was knighted
in 1933 and died in 1959.
2 In addition to functioning on behalf of the estate owners as explained in the
previous chapter, the agency houses today also act as exporters, either for overseas
buyers or as shippers in their own right.
152

fled with Ceylon tea and indeed with Ceylon itself by the public
at large is Sir Thomas Lipton. This takes us back to the Colonial
period but when, to the less sophisticated, Ceylon was a Lipton
rather than a British colony; they pictured the island as one great 'tea
garden', presided over by a father-figure with a goatee beard, a
yachting cap and a blue-spotted bow tie. And that is exactly what
'Tommy' Lipton intended them to think. The facts were somewhat
otherwise, but hardly less remarkable.
The son of a humble Irish grocer in Glasgow, who opened his
own first shop in 1871, had one driving idea in his head to sell
bacon, butter and eggs at competitive prices to the working class. Up
to the year 1888, when he was already a millionaire, he had nothing
whatever to do with tea; 'provisions' in those days were one thing 'groceries' quite another. But (as we shall see in the next chapter) this
was a booming time for tea in Britain, and various approaches seem
to have been made to Lipton from the Mincing Lane direction. He
listened cautiously, looked at the market, decided that most tea was
too expensive, tried out blends, and while buying for the moment
through 'the usual channels', made up his mind to by-pass wholesalers, brokers, importers, exporters and agency houses, and to reach
out for the leaf actually growing on the bush in the field.
Alec Waugh' suggests that Lipton made a snap decision when,
having announced in I890 that he was going on a sea-trip to Australia,
he quietly arranged to get off the boat at Colombo. That is not one's
impression of the man, at any rate in his early days. He was canny.
Though the coffee crisis was just about over, there was still time to
buy estates in Ceylon at very attractive prices, and this is what
Lipton, who had sent his agent Frank DipIli& on in advance,
decided to do. There was at least one purchase ready to hand the
estates in Haputale District which had belonged to R. B. Downall,
the planters' trusted representative on the Legislative Council, who
had died two years before. Lipton snapped them up Monarakande,
Mousakellie, Lyamastotte and, of course, Dambatenne, his pride and
joy and today the only Ceylon estate still owned by Lipton Ltd.2
Other properties were added later Oakfield next door, the big
Pooprassie Group in Pussellawa, Runyan and Ovoca in Maskeliya,
1 There are two main printed sources for Sir Thomas Lipton's career: (I) His
own'Leaves from the Lipton Logs (London, Hutchinson, 1931), written in conjunction with William Blackwood; (2) Alec Waugh, The Lipton Story (London, Cassell,
1951). The legendary element would appear to be stronger in the first than in the
second.
2 The modem Dambatenne Group (1,735 acres) incorporates Mousakellie.
153

Eadella in Kurunegala, Panilkande in the Morawak Korale but it
was Dambatenne round which the whole thing revolved.
Anyone who has visited it on its extraordinary rocky shelf and
stayed in Tommy Lipton's spacious bungalow with a i,000-ft drop
below the garden, must realise how the sheer outlandishness of the
place must have appealed to him. Of course, he exploited its publicity
value to the full, but it was with genuine pride that he would take
distinguished visitors for rather windy picnics on the 6,000-ft top of
the estate, and according to familiar legend would display with
possessive gesture not only his own properties spread out below, but
several belonging to other people, plus miles upon miles of indistinguishable jungle.
What did Thomas Lipton actually do in (or for, or to) Ceylon?
Not quite so much as was generally imagined. As with the extent of
his estates, he was apt to exaggerate the originality of his methods.
He certainly stirred things up and popularised the equation 'Ceylon=
Tea' at a most important moment. But his very success stultified his
professed aim to 'cut out the middleman' by supplying the public
direct from his own estates. At a time when his dynamic sales and
advertising methods, especially in the U.K. and America, were
building up a turnover of millions of pounds of tea per year, his 3,000
acres or so could not have supplied a tenth of his needs and he was
soon buying and blending where and how he could, like all his major
competitors. Nor was he quite such a pioneer in planting methods
as he chose to claim. To give just one example, in Leaves from the
Lipton Logs he gives a distinct impression of having invented the
system of transporting leaf by aerial ropeway, though we have seen
that it was flourishing ten years earlier.
On the distribution side, of course, he was a genius. The group of
buildings at what used to be called Lipton Circus in Colombo became
a power-house from which Ceylon tea flowed in enormous quantities,
not only to the Lipton shops (and subsequently to the great Allied
Suppliers Group into which they were later absorbed), but to retailers
in every part of the world. There are many countries, great and small,
where the name 'Lipton' on a yellow label is still tea's most familiar
image, as old 'Tommy' himself was in his heroic heyday.
Next on the scene of these would-be 'direct traders' was the
ponderously named ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH JOINT COOPERATIVE WHOLESALE SOCIETY LTD. This organisation resembled Lipton's own in having roots in the Victorian working class,
though in other ways it was its antithesis. Whereas Lipton was about
154

the most extreme example one could choose of a 'one-man show',
the co-operative movement was just what its title implied. Cooperative retailing by groups of consumers led to co-operative
production, and among other things to the development between 1882
and 1902 of a unique organisation sponsored by the wholesale
societies of England and Scotland for the express purpose of trading
in tea and one or two additional beverages. From there, it seemed a
natural step for the movement to secure its own sources of supply.
The first man to bring forward the idea was Mr T. Killon, when
he was representing Bury, Lancashire, at a Federation quarterly
meeting in June 1891, the very summer that Tommy Lipton landed
in Ceylon. Nothing was done at that moment, but later a deputation
was sent to India to look into the question, and in December 1901
the Committee of the E. & S.C.W.S. was given a 'general authority to
purchase estates' when a suitable opportunity arose.' As it turned out,
this happened to be in Ceylon, not India.
In June 1902 the Committee reported buying the adjoining Nugawella and Weliganga Estates about '7 miles from Kandy. The area
was 364 acres, freehold, and the price 'including the buildings and
shrubs' was k9,8zo. Since then there have been additional purchases
and some sales, including Nagastenne with its ancient tea history
(bought 1914, sold 1926), and now the properties have been grouped
into five estates with a gross bearing acreage of 3,905 in tea.
E. & S.C.W.S. maintains a depot in Colombo which exercises
agency powers over the estates and also buys tea in large quantities
in the auctions. For many years the estates functioned strictly as
suppliers to the co-operative movement, like any shoe or bacon
factory, the prices to be paid to them being fixed internally, but today
they take their chance in the auctions along with everybody else, and
must be regarded mainly as investments.
And finally, BROOKE BOND CEYLON LTD. Those who tend to
regard this Company as a somewhat recent and spectacular irruption
into Ceylon will be surprised to find how far back its history goes and
how it links with the 'family' world of the Colombo trade. When I was
being told, in the old Union Place office, about the Webster Automatic Packeting Company from which the whole thing sprang, I did
not immediately relate this to that Valentine Webster who, according
to Villiers, was a sort of inspired 'bagman' for the Ceylon Agricultural
Company, launched by Bosanquet & Co. in the 188os. Later Captain
Webster (as he was always called he had marched with Kitchener
1 Percy Redfern, The Story of the C.W.S. (Manchester, C.W.S., 1913).
155

to Khartoum) started planting, but in 1897 we find him on a tour of
Europe, financed to the tune of L55o by the Thirty Committee (see
page 198). He reported back from Stockholm, St Petersburgh (Leningrad), Moscow, Budapest and Syracuse, and all told claimed to have
supplied propaganda material to 46 firms in 34 cities.
It was not until 1905 that Webster set up, with Bosanquet backing,
the business which still bears his name, though he owned premises
on the site at least five years before. I asked Mr C. C. Conraed, who
only retired as Brooke Bond's works manager quite recently and
remembers the Captain well, what all that was about 'Automatic
Pocketing': Às a matter of fact,' he said with a smile, 'the packets
were mostly filled by hand those machines didn't work too well!'
The company flourished, good connections were formed in Malta
and Egypt particularly, but also in Europe, and there was a useful
line in desiccated coconut as well as tea. Captain Webster died in 1917
after serving (at a somewhat advanced age, one would think) in
minesweepers in the North Sea. It was little more than a year later
that Brooke Bond, who were already important clients, took over
control. Brooke Bond Ceylon Ltd. itself dates from 1922, but the
Webster Automatic Packeting Company survived and the name is
still used for certain shipping purposes.
Like the other two big organisations we have been discussing,
Brooke Bond were from the start interested in tea estate ownership.
Their earliest acquisitions were Udaveria (in Haputale West) and
Allakolla (Knuckles); soon after Ettrick (Haputale) and Ratnatenne
(Kelebokka) were added. Various other properties were bought and
sold over the years, a conspicuous purchase (1956) being the Galaha
Group,' whose owners had premises adjoining the Brooke Bond
offices in Colombo. Today only Galaha and Udaveria have been
retained, but Brooke Bond have built up quite an extensive agency
business. In addition, they are of course tremendously influential in
the Colombo auctions, especially since they started to buy for the
biggest Australian firm, Messrs Bushel's Pty. Ltd. of Sydney, as well
as for their own world-wide branches.
When we turn to the shipping process, we realise that as the

`Colombo' emphasis of the previous chapter was becoming a little
unfair to Kandy in respect of its agency houses, so this one could
Apart from the Galaha Estate (not far from Loolecondera), the Group included
Campion in Bogawantalawa, and Hauteville in Dimbula.
156

easily do an injustice to Galle in the matter of its port. Ceylon is not
blessed with natural harbours on the south and west, the most
populous and (from the European traders' point of view) the most
accessible areas. For centuries the country had to make do with the
small inlet of what was called Point de Galle, together with a virtually
open roadstead at Colombo. The former remained the port of call for
mail steamers as late as 1875, whence there was tedious road or
coasting communication with Colombo, always the principal trading
town. (Before the coming of the telegraph the Fergusons got over this
by organising a pigeon post for which needless to say fabulous
speed and efficiency were claimed.)
Even on tonnage 'inward and outward', Galle just held the lead
until the same period (1875: Galle, 968,377 tons; Colombo, 805,718).
The old Dutch warehouses buzzed with life; a few big firms such as
Delmege, Reid & Co. (ancestors of the present Delmege, Forsyth &
Co.) and Wilson, Clarke & Co. (later Aitken, Spence & Co.) maintained their headquarters there'; and because of bunkering the mail
steamers practically the whole of Ceylon's coal imports came in
through Galle. But many people believed that to put Ceylon on the
modern mercantile map something must be done, and quickly, about
Colombo harbour.
The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce took the lead in the fight for
better facilities and finally in 1871 the Governor, Sir Hercules
Robinson, brought out Townsend, designer of Plymouth breakwater,
to inspect and report. Soon afterwards Sir John Coode was appointed
Consultant Engineer. The prime essential, of course, was to provide
shelter from the monsoon, so the south-west breakwater was the first
work put in hand.
It was a tremendous moment when the Prince of Wales arrived
towards the end of 1875 and on 8 December laid what was courteously
called the Foundation Stone. The job was pushed forward against
great difficulties, and the last block of masonry was not lowered till
1878.
The breakwater and adjoining works immediately provided zo
steamer-berths and sheltered anchorage for many more vessels great
and small; since then, of course, the story has been one of continuous
extension and improvement, and the build-up of Colombo until it
' Both these concerns are now centred on Colombo the former conspicuous in
the shipping world, the latter as agents for rubber rather than tea companies. Galle
was also the 'stamping ground' of the fine old firm of J. J. Vanderspar & Co., with
family connections going back to Dutch times. Extensive works are at present being
carried out to improve the ancient harbour.
157

rivalled Calcutta among the great tea-shipping ports of the world.
Year after year tea-chests by the hundred thousand have passed
smoothly from estate to warehouse, from warehouse to lighter and
into the holds of the world's steamers.'
Certainly, as I was watching this immemorial process for the first
time in 1956, I little expected that within a few years a visit to Ceylon's
principal tea port would imply a trip to Trincomalee!
The story is a remarkable one. The great bay on Ceylon's northeast coast, one of the largest natural harbours in the world, was
famous throughout the British occupation as a naval base sailors of
all nations knew the name of `Trinco'. Though its rather isolated
location was always against its development as a commercial port, it
was often considered in that role. As early as 1853, the Peninsular and
Oriental shipping line was rumoured to be considering making it
their Ceylon calling place instead of Galle and some people thought
this would be quite a good thing it would reduce pressure on Colombo
and 'the Dumbara planters could send their coffee there' (prophetic
remark). Nine years later the P. and 0. actually decided on this step,
but the Government stepped in and banned it on the grounds of
Trincomalee's supposed unhealthy climate and the probable delay
in getting letters through to Colombo.
So the Royal Navy stayed on in solitary grandeur, and when the
last units left in 1957 and only a small Ceylonese force succeeded, that

seemed to be about the end of Trinco. However, towards the close
i
of the very same year, a series of strikes led to the accumulation of
tea in the Colombo warehouses and a threat to the whole of Ceylon's
vital export trade. The first remedy suggested was to build up the
shipments from Galle, which has always played a useful part except
during the south-west monsoon. This was done with some effect,
but by May 1958 it became obvious that more drastic steps were
needed.
Something like ioo million lb. of tea was now awaiting shipment,
and week after week the Colombo auctions were postponed. Members
of the Colombo trade, led by Mr A. G. Mathewson of Heath & Co.
(another partner in this firm, Mr S. J. Campbell, had been prominent
in the Galle effort) and Commander D. G. H. Wright of Brooke
Bond, proposed that Trincomalee should be used, and obtained the
backing of Mr R. G. Senanayake, Minister of Commerce and Trade.
1 Most of the famous shipping lines trading to the East make regular calls at
Colombo and/or Trincomalee and Galle to take on tea. They include such familiar
names as the Bibby, Blue Funnel, British India, Brocklebank, City, Clan, and
Glen lines.
158

Then they went into action. Leading Colombo houses lent staff;
shipping companies agreed to call; tea began to arrive at Trincomalee
by lorry during the third week in May; and on the 31st the s.s.
Chakdina left with the first cargo nearly ri million lb. of tea bound
for Australia.
So began the Trincomalee Tea Administration, which within a few
months was shipping every pound of tea destined for the U.K.
market, and much more besides. By 1963, Trinco's share of the export
trade was as much as 71 per cent. After that, with the port of Colombo
working better, the balance began to swing the other way and the 2
cents rebate on export duty which had been allowed to encourage
the use of Trinco and Galle was withdrawn (i July 1964). Even so,
in 1965 Trinco sent out 260.7 million lb. of tea against Colombo's
203.4 and Galle's 17.1 (Plate 22b).
Everyone who visited Trinco in the earliest days of the Tea
Administration used to be struck by the easy informality of the
arrangements at Love Lane and China Bay wharf a railway siding,
a couple of unspectacular warehouses and (for some time) only one
large lighter or rather 'flat' to do the whole job all this presided
over by a large and cheerful ex-naval policeman, Mr L. E. Kees.
Since then the installation and the lighter fleet have been gradually
extended; the Trincomalee Tea Administration itself has been turned
into a non-profit-making company, with Ceylon Holdings Ltd. (a
subsidiary of Somerville & Co.) acting as agents. And since year by
year Ceylon manages to send more tea abroad, it looks as if there is
going to be permanent business for all three of her tea ports.
159
Chapter lo
AND SO TO MINCING LANE

'Having but little through wheeled traffic, it is one of the quietest
thoroughfares of the great City, joining at its top and bottom two
of the noisiest in the world. How many times a day is not Fenchurch
Street blocked by drays, omnibuses, cabs and carts? . . Having
steered safely through all this we turn down the quieter Lane,
where the subdued hum of men's voices and the tripping of their
rapid steps is all we hear.'
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, August 188$
`That dd Mincing Lane'
SIR JOHN FOLINGSBY, BART.
T was named after a community of nuns. These mynchen, we are

told, spent their sequestered lives in meditation and prayer. The
subdued hum of their voices and their tripping steps find a curious
echo in my quotation from the old ' Trop. Ag.'; while such unworldly
creatures might well have endorsed Sir John's epithet, though for
different reasons.
Ceylon, of course, had no part in the process, so characteristic of
the City, whereby the nuns gave way to merchants from Genoa and
they in turn to shippers and master-mariners 'trading to the colonies';
until finally a massive complex of offices and auction rooms took the
place of informal exchanges at coffee-house level, and Mincing Lane,
in its modern sense, was born.
Tea had been sold by auction since the early eighteenth century,
though the only vendor was the East India Company and the purchasers were, on the whole, confined to a limited circle of large
merchants. The Company's monopoly had led to restiveness among the
dealers and wholesalers even before an alternative supply was available, and from about 1834 onwards tea began to be auctioned at the
Commercial Sale Rooms in Mincing Lane as well as at East India
House. The latter, however, was the scene of the memorable sale on
10 January 1839, when for the first time Indian tea entered the market
and the undivided reign of China came to an end.
By the time the auctions begin to be of serious interest to us i.e. in
the late 187os they had assumed a pattern which has persisted.
Selling brokers such as W. J. Thompson & Son, George White & Co.
and Wilson, Smithett & Co. (soon to be joined by Messrs. Gow &
16o

Wilson) were already occupying the 'box', as their successors do
today, and names like Twining, Travers, Mennell, Ridgway, Peek and
Horniman appeared among the buyers. The catalogues looked more
or less the same as they do now, the teas being sold in lots or 'breaks'
of so many chests under the names of the individual estates.
Into this close-knit yet strongly competitive world, Ceylon made
an unobtrusive entry, befitting a 'new boy'. A book like the present
must be expected to establish the 'when' as well as the 'how', and this
can now be done with fair confidence. If you had, until recently,
consulted the quiz machine in the Ceylon Tea Centre, London, you
would have found the answer to the question 'When was Ceylon
tea first auctioned in Great Britain?' firmly given as '1873'. But today
it seems certain that a couple of million or so visitors to the Centre
have been misled on this vital point! The answer was derived from
the statement [already discussed in Chapter 41 that 23 lb. of James
Taylor's Loolecondera tea was sent to London in that year and was
valued at Rs. 58 (about A, 7s.). Though such a funny little 'break'
could not possibly have found its way into anybody's catalogue, this
was reasonably assumed to be the start of regular consignments to
the London sales.
The story of how Ceylon tea stormed Mincing Lane does not
really start until 1875; its auction debut comes later still. A recent
hunt through the Public Ledger reveals that both London and New
York got at least some of the 1,438 lb. exported from Colombo in that
year. The relevant entries are:
Wednesday, 18 August 1875
Sundry exports from Ceylon for New York - Tea, Duke of Argyll,
two boxes
Tuesday, 24 August 1875
Sundry exports, from Ceylon to London - Tea, Duke of Argyll, two
boxes
Just why two small consignments on the same ship were recorded
in this manner at an interval of nearly a week we do not know, but at
least we are on our way!
The following year provides one similar entry, though this time
we do not get the name of the ship:
Tuesday-28 May 1876
Sundry exports from Ceylon - 240 lb. of tea for London.'
Identifiable perhaps with the 'experimental consignment of 300 lb.' in 1876,
referred to by Messrs Lewis & Co. in their Tea Trade Circular for i December
1884.
161

In 1877, when Ceylon's total exports were still microscopic, we
draw a blank in fact the Produce Markets Review in a general roundup of the world's tea resources (29 December 1877) talks of the rise of
Java, and of Japan becoming 'a great exporting country', but omits
Ceylon altogether!
1878 makes up for all. The year starts with a small quantity on the
water:
16 January 1878
Sundry exports of tea, iso lb. for London from Ceylon per Yarm.
In October comes a blow-by-blow account of Ceylon tea's FIRST
It begins on 22 October with
the arrival of the Penguin from Colombo with a substantial parcel,
98o lb. Then on Saturday the 26th the Public Ledger announces under
the heading TEA: 'Ceylon. The first small consignment of tea from
this island is advertised for sale on Monday next'. On the 28th the
advertisement appears:
At the London Commercial Sale Rooms
This day z8 October at 12
Indian Tea 277 pckgs
Ceylon Tea io pckgs
On account of the importers. Bulked and refilled. Theodore & Rawlins,
Brokers, io Mincing Lane.
APPEARANCE AT THE LONDON AUCTIONS.
And the next day is published the following reticent report:

Ceylon. At the public sale the first consignment yet received, comprising io half chests, was sold at is. 'lid. for Orange Pekoe and mid. for
Pekoe Souchong; these prices were considered fairly satisfactory. The
appearance and style of the leaf is very good, but the quality of the liquor
somewhat dull and capable of much improvement.
That the event attracted great attention in spite of the rather
humble offerings is shown by other references. The weekly Colonial
Empire (r November 1878) obtained from the brokers a more extended description of the teas 'the make of leaf equals the first Indian,
but the liquor though of good strength lacks flavour. The Orange
Pekoe is a closely twisted even leaf with good gold tip. The Pekoe
Souchong is an even blackish leaf.'
But interest spread beyond the little world of Mincing Lane.
Under 6 November date-line the London evening paper the Globe,
after reporting the excitement which the sale aroused, went on to
recall that considerable quantities of Ceylon-grown tea had already
162
been privately disposed of in London at prices which had encouraged

the 'energetic planters' of Ceylon to compete with China and Assam.
The writer then rather contradicts himself by referring to the prejudice 'which always seems to meet the introduction of an article from
an unaccustomed source', as having prevented these small parcels
from receiving fair play among the dealers.
Unfortunately, nobody bothers to tell us what marks were on the
chests at that first sale! But when a much larger consignment came up
the following March there is mention of 159 chests bearing CCL in a
triangle, as well as some under a 'double diamond' mark. `CCL'
almost certainly stands for Ceylon Company Ltd. so that it looks as
though James Taylor's old rivals beat him to the auction room! This
is rather confirmed by the fact that a consignment sold 'with spirit'
on 8 October the same year (1879) included tea from three Ceylon
Company estates Condegalla, Hope and Sogama, as well as some
chests simply marked 'CC'.
This tea evidently formed part of what the Grocer reported a few
days before as being the largest importation of tea from Ceylon yet
recorded; it took place on 26 September, when the Duke of Devonshire
arrived in London with 152 chests, z6 half-chests, 85 quarter-chests
and 2 cases 'equal to about 16,000 lb.'. In fact, we are now on the eve
of one of the most sensational incursions into a London market ever
known. From an invaluable table compiled by Messrs Gow and
Wilson five years later we can plot its early course:
Chests
I-chests
Boxes
Total Packages
Estates
188o
855
334
40
1881
705
1,612
13
1882
3,306
4,852
1,071
1883
i1,080
10,280
857
15,139
16,728
1,229
2,330
9,229
22,217
32,577
13
15
56
III
135
1884
710
The brokers add that in the first half of 1885 fifty new names of
estates had already been added to the tally. Reckoning chests (as
they did then) at Ioo lb. net and 2-chests at 6o lb., the 1884 imports
represent over 21 million lb. of tea; three years later the figure was
15 million lb.; three years after that it was 34 million!
It cannot be claimed, of course, that the instant acceptance of
Ceylon tea in the world's markets was due entirely to its own
163

undoubted attractions. Consumption was in a phase of rapid expansion, above all in the United Kingdom. This was due not only to the
social changes mentioned in Chapter 3, but to a steady reduction in
taxation during the second half of the nineteenth century. The tea
duty had been really onerous, and it is a matter of history how. it
stimulated, and was eventually defeated by, the smuggling interest.
As late as 1851 the duty was still as. od. lb. plus 5 per cent ad valorem,
but two years later it was reduced to is. 6d., and apart from a temporary rise during the Crimean War, it fell steadily, decade after
decade, until by the time Ceylon tea began to come forward it was
only 6d., with a further reduction to 4d. in 189o.
And as taxation was lightened, so tea-drinking increased. In 185o
it was just under 2 lb. per head; in 186o about 2i; 187o 4; 1885 about
5 lb. per head. In terms of total consumption the most telling figure is
that between 1864 and 1884 imports into the U.K. almost exactly
doubled from 88,5oo,000 lb. to 175,09200o lb. in 20 years!
In the light of such figures, Ceylon's contribution, even when it
began to approach the 15 million mark, may not seem so striking;
nevertheless the impact made by a planting community most of
whose tea was literally 'just out of the nursery', provides an episode
as dramatic as any in this book.
Indeed, some of Ceylon's planters, in their eagerness, hit the
market a little too soon. This accounts for a feature in the Gow &
Wilson table which looks strange to modern eyes the very high
proportion of half-chests and boxes to full chests in those early years.
Everybody was trying to make up 'breaks', however small, and hurry
them to Mincing Lane. The result, of course, was that with the
exception of a few well-organised estates which sent regular and
substantial consignments, the Ceylons did tend to get relegated to the
subsidiary sales of small breaks (defined in the early days as less than
eight chests) for which dealers did not even bother to obtain samples.
This was not for lack of advice from London! Complaints and
warnings came in a steady stream. In a letter printed in the Tropical
Agriculturist in January 1882, but obviously relating to the previous
year, Hutchison & Co. go so far as to say that breaks of nothing less
than 15 chests will 'meet with proper attention'. It was not until mid1882 that a powerful editorial pen could forecast the good time coming
when
'Ceylon tea, instead of entering the market in such small breaks as to
be the object not only of neglect but of derision to conservative brokers
and prejudiced dealers, will be exported in quantity . .
164
Conservatism and prejudice may have had something to do with

other criticisms which Ceylon tea had to meet during its novitiate,
but two at least seem to have been well grounded. One (which had its
bearing on the question of small lots) was the excessive variety of
types and descriptions which Ceylon planters were hustling to
market.
Naturally, in complaining about this the buyers were consulting
their own convenience. The argument was pushed to extremes by
the Produce Markets Review which in 1882, as the climax to a long
campaign, carried an editorial so subversive in content, so painfully
relevant to what is happening today, that it demands full quotation.
After the usual complaint about the difficulty of conducting trade
owing to the multiplicity of small breaks and too many descriptions,
the writer goes on:
`Some rough and ready remedy will soon have to be found here, such
as bulking the entire sound produce of one mark together, disregarding
the names of the teas. The bulking is already effected here more's the
pity for the planters and all that would have to be done would be to mix
the so-called Pekoes, Souchongs etc. together. There is as a rule no
perceptible difference in flavour between them, as they are all picked
at the same time off the same bush and then elaborately sorted out an
operation useful no doubt when the smallest and youngest leaves, the
Pekoes, fetched 3s. 6d. per lb., but out of place when they may fetch a
third of that price.
Ìt is indeed difficult to understand why the planters continue to sift
and subdivide their teas in this manner. If they left them all together,
simply winnowing out the large flat red leaves and pass them all through
a bulking mill such as the grocers use, the cost of sifting would be saved,
the tea would not have to be injured here, nor would its cost be added
to by having to be mixed in the bonded warehouses, and it would not
have to be turned out if the chests were of fairly uniform tare. To this
course, frequently advanced in these pages for the last fifteen or twenty
years, planters reply that this is simply impossible except on large
gardens. If so, the sooner they amalgamate the better, so as to conduct
their business in a thorough manner.'
Can we hear that ghostly quill scratching approval of C.T.C.,
quick brew, and artificially produced Fannings?1
On one point the author certainly had the sympathy of the Ceylon
exporters. This was his reference to bulking. Until new regulations
came into force in 1884, every chest of Indian or Ceylon tea sent to
1
See Appendix HI.

165

London was turned out on the floor of the warehouse so that (a) the
Customs men could establish the nett weight of the contents, and (b)
all the tea in a given break could be mixed to a uniform quality and
appearance. Bitter were the complaints about the charges ('more
than the cost of freight from Colombo to London') for a progess
which did the owner's property 'the greatest possible amount of
injury, that of turning out the tea on the cold, damp and probably
dirty floors'; blood-curdling the descriptions of what happened next the leaf mixed up with wooden shovels and then returned to the
chests 'into which the warehousemen get and tread down the tea with
their boots'. No wonder the Globe newspaper (July 1883), while
welcoming the introduction of a revolving drum for bulking purposes
by the East and West India Company, was sarcastic about this firm's
'great care' for the tea heretofore, in insisting on a cloth being put into
the chests for the men to stamp oni
Bulking in London was in due course greatly reduced by the
Customs concession referred to, by which the exporter was allowed to
state the net weight on each package, and only Io per cent of the
break ('or not less than three packages') was turned out for test
purposes; and by improved uniformity of contents at the Ceylon end.
The other criticism of their teas with which the early exporters had
to contend was in the matter of manufacture, the main themes here
being 'burnt' or over-fired teas and 'smoky' flavour attributed to
faulty fermentation; but in truth one's only surprise is that planters
who had in most cases given their lives to coffee made such a good job
of the new and much more taxing task of processing tea.
In spite of all this, Ceylon tea did, as we have seen, gain a foothold
in the market, and gradually began to do well in it. A firm like W. J. &
H. Thompson, who were 'sold' on Ceylon from the start, never failed
with good news and cheerful advice. In a key year, 1883, we find them
writing sagely to James Wight on Kandaloya about the vexed question
of fine plucking they have found his tea much improved and 'only
falling short of the special strength of Loolecondera, the rich malty
liquor of Galleboddel and the fine flavour of Rookwood'; shortly afterwards they send out another little homily on fermentation.
Two years earlier than that, even, George White & Co. issued a
report in the same optimistic vein the first we can trace, as a matter
of fact, about an individual mark:
1 Though the spellings are far from uniform, it seems more likely that the estate
indicated here and later in the chapter was Gallebodde in Dickoya Lower rather
than Galbodde in Rangalla, recorded on page 95 as having had some tea' in 1875.
166

Great Tower Street, London
12 March i 88 i
'We had a sample submitted to us recently of Ceylon tea the produce
of Sembawatte Estate, Yakdessa, and we are glad to notice a marked
improvement in leaf and liquor.
`The leaf is desirable, being blackish, fairly twisted and mixed with
gold tip; the liquor, although lacking the fulness of the fine Darjeeling
marks, is brisk and pungent. With care in the manufacture we believe
this could be obtained, and the result would be a really valuable tea.'
2,
Some of those 'conservative' dealers who had greeted earlier

offerings with growls of more of that Ceylon rubbish' soon began to
change their tune! And just as we have singled-out the 'men of '75'
among the planters and the first consignors to the Colombo sales, so it
would be pleasant to compile a roll of honour of the earliest marks
on the London auctions. Thirteen in 188o . . . 15 in 1881 . . . 56 in
1882 . . . which were they? Alas, firm evidence is lacking, as no broker's
catalogue earlier than December 1883 (see below) seems to have
survived removals, amalgamations and the Blitz, while the numerous
Press reports which I have in front of me are of course very sketchy.
But we can be sure that in addition to the Ceylon Company group
already mentioned, the following marks were among those making a
regular appearance in Mincing Lane from the earliest days: Windsor
(i.e. Windsor Forest) and Seaforth (both recorded in December
1879); Loolecondera ('Another capital little invoice', 25 October
1881); WES (? Westhall, Kotmale); Sembawatte (the famous Rutherford estate in Yakdessa, long since vanished) and Kandaloya (in the
same district); KAW (for the so-called Central Tea Factory on
Carolina); William Forsythe's Dunedin; and close behind these, Mariawatte, Calsay, Gallebodde and Rookwood, all of which were well
recognised by early 1883. It is pleasant, too, to find Culloden (Kalutara)
putting the Low-country among the pioneers.
As it happens, the first Ceylon mark which we have been able to
unearth in a printed catalogue is none of these, and a peculiar affair
it seems HARLUISH! It bobs up at the end of a Gow & Wilson Indian
sale on 4 December 1883 then, and for some years to come, Ceylons
were lumped in with Indians in the auction room. Through the kindness of Messrs Gow Wilson & Stanton (as Gow & Wilson became
in 1885), the entry is reproduced in facsimile on page 168 and is well
worth study. But, first of all that mark, Harluish. No such estate,
of course, exists, and it is pretty clear that HARDENHUISH (usually
167
On account of the Importers,

A t Cutler Street Warehouse.
Per RAVENNA, @ Colombo,.
Reported October, 1883.
-- *Hi-di- let-3
Harluish. ........f109140. 6
I t
F.
1. r,
Hf-Che. s 31
z.
Pa.
10 11 f-C17ts
1--"
...., It. 3 '
.0.00aireer1
-il-I
, I.90
GJ parr ov 11G(
FIGURE 4. Early Auction Catalogue : Ceylon Tea
pronounced `Harnish') has been wrongly transcribed on what may
have been its first appearance; the mark figures again (correctly spelt) in
later Gow & Wilson Ceylon sales (e.g. 12 August and 8 September
1884). Nor is that the end of the little mystery. Turning, naturally,
to the Ceylon Directory for 1883-4 to see how far Hardenhuish had
got with its tea-growing, we find all the 184 cultivated acres of Hugh
Parry's estate in Dickoya Lower registered as under coffee and
cinchona no tea! On to 1885: 181 cultivated acres i8o of them teal
We can only hark back to the comment on an earlier page about the
editor's struggle to get in returns and the danger of accepting the
early Directories as being strictly up to date.
Anyway, the Harluish (or Hardenhuish) invoice, with its six halfchests of Bro. Pek., eleven of Pek. and ten of Pek. Sou., is very
typical of the period, and illustrates the 'small breaks' problem already
discussed. The prices too (for this is happily a marked catalogue) line
up well with what was current in 1883. In the Gow Wilson paper of
1885 we have quoted, there is an interesting passage on price movements. The average price is given as 11d. per lb. in the first quarter
of 188o, trending downwards to 9d. in early 1881. Apart from a
temporary fall at the end of 1882, there was then a steady rise to a
peak of is. 5id. at the end of 1883, and a more or less firm ts. 3d.
until mid-1885. Then, as now, the total range was wide. That 'capital
little invoice' from Loolecondera in 1881 varied from as. od., for the
168

Broken Pekoe down to 6d. for the Dust; the same estate and some
half-dozen rivals were getting an average of near as. od. in mid-1883,
against is. 4d. for the run-of-the-mill marks; Sembawatte reached
Is. 8d. in September 1883 and a celebrated Windsor Forest break of
no less than 252 chests averaged is. 6}d.
At a period when it was possible to lay down tea (of a tolerable
character) in London for less than 9d., the better companies were
getting good prices and making good profits. We may add that tea is
still a remarkably low-priced product. At current money values, the
equivalent of 1883's is. 5id. London auction average would be at
least 8s. od.; the average in 1965 was 4s. 4d.
What did the buyers big packers already famous or 'little men'
dealing on behalf of their country customers do with the novel
product that was coming into their hands?
For several years, of course, the quantities of Ceylon tea available
were too small to be given distinctive treatment. It was a period not
only of expanding consumption but of a marked swing away from the
traditional China types. India overtook China as the U.K.'s principal
source of tea in the import season 1888-9, when arrivals from the
three countries were:
India
94,500 million lb.
China 92,500
1/ 77
Ceylon 27,899 51 /1
India's progress had been accompanied by a lot of curiously strident

catcalls against the alleged inferiority and even adulteration of some
of the China offerings. To give only one example, in its issue for
7 September ][880 the Grocer urged dealers not to buy some 'horrible
rubbish' which has just arrived (the next issue makes clear that it was
from China), as the public would 'give up drinking tea altogether if
supplied with this poison'. It is hard for us to realise that in fact
`China' stood for 'cheap' and not infrequently for 'nasty' in our
grandfathers' days!
Yet earlier in that same year 1880, the Grocer had also been critical
of Indian tea, though on somewhat different grounds the Editor
rashly prophesied that it would never exceed an import figure of 36
to 40 million lb. because it could only be used for blending purposes too strong and rough to drink alone! Fighting words, which the
Grocer was unwise enough to repeat a year later.
So we have a background of deteriorating China types and some
distrust of the 'strong and rough' Assams, for the next stage of
169

Ceylon's forward march in Mincing Lane. This was the production
of Ceylon packs as a sales attraction and the use of the word 'Ceylon'
as a guarantee of quality.
Who started this we are not sure, or whether any of it pre-dated
Sir Thomas Lipton's initiative in publicising Ceylon tea from about
1890 onwards. But it is certain that at least two 'Ceylon Tea' labels
still popular today date from that time Lipton's own Yellow
Label, and the English and Scottish Joint C.W.S.'s 'No. i e. As
regards the former we know already that it was Sir Thomas's policy
to make the utmost publicity value out of 'his' island, and quaint
engravings of Dambatenne and other Lipton estates soon started to
appear on his packets. Other firms which 'cashed in' on Ceylon tea
in the packet were Ridgways and what was then actually called the
Mazawattee Ceylon Tea Co.
For some years before that, however, estate teas were being sold
'straight' often under a brand name. We hear for example of
'Anchor' brand produced on Bunyan Estate and as early as 1881 a
correspondent of the Tropical Agriculturist reported it as excellent .
`so different from what is usually met with'. At about the same time
an enterprising Aberdeen merchant, William Westland, was offering
7-lb. parcels giving a choice of different estates' teas, so that customers could make their selection for subsequent orders.
The success of these developments may partly explain why some
of our strongest evidence for the publicity value attached to Ceylon
tea comes not from blenders' records or the archives of advertising
but from the police courts! The Merchandise Marks Acts had
recently been introduced and the Planters' Association and the Ceylon
Association, zealous to the core for the good name of Ceylon tea,
were eager to prosecute poachers at whatever expense (and it was
considerable even if they won).
There is a large and fascinating dossier on this subject. One of the
more audacious cases, perhaps, was that in which two dealers, Messrs
Thomas Paget and Robert Piggott of Whitechapel, were charged at
Worship Street Police Court in May 1890 with having sold a blend
mainly composed of China and Assam under the name of an actual
Ceylon estate, `Sogama', which was, as we have seen, already well
known in Mincing Lane. The chief witnesses for the prosecution
were Mr W. J. Thompson Jr. and Mr George Stehn of Messrs
Wilson, Smithett & Co. The defence gracefully admitted that the
tea didn't come from Sogama but declined to say where it did come
fromthey certainly could not afford to put 'all Ceylon' in the packets.
170

In fact this prosecution broke ground which is still being scratched
over today: What does the phrase 'Ceylon blend' mean? How much
good Ceylon tea will give a pack 'Ceylon character'? Is it misleading
to put CEYLON TEA in large letters and follow it with 'blended with
other growths' in small? On the last question, the magistrate did not
think the device dishonest, but for having specifically used the name
Sogama, he fined the defendants io.1
The following month a grocer called George Westover appeared
at Greenwich Court, along with co-defendants who bore, we regret
to say, the honoured name of Kearley and Tonge, Mitre Square! This
affair had a certain humour, relished by everyone in Court. To begin
with, the packers had not stolen the name of an estate they had
simply invented one; when Mr Stehn (star witness once again)
suggested that no such estate as 'Blackmore Vale' existed, their
counsel blithely replied 'We don't pretend there is'. More smiles when
the prosecution alleged that after the words 'Pure Ceylon Tea',
`by paying close attention to the label, and perhaps with the aid of
glasses, the words "blended with India and China" might be discovered,
but they were so hidden by a signature, one flourish being scrawled
heavily through them, that the words denoting a blend were certain to
escape the eye of the purchaser'.
A final touch of comedy (not emerging in Court) was that the
Ceylon Association's suspicion about a China element in this blend
may well have sprung from the Secretary's initial belief that the
defendant firm was called Kearley and Fong.
Once again the question of the proportion of Ceylon tea in a 'Ceylon
blend' was explored; and finally the magistrate decided that there had
been an intention to mislead, and a Li() fine was imposed.
Instructive too, is a correspondence of 1889 between the Ceylon
Association and Mr E. Higson, of the Colonial Tea Company,
Manchester, which was putting out a blend called 'Adam's Peake
Ceylon Tea'. Mr Higson defended with Northern bluntness his use
of the words `Ceylon Tea Blend Mountain Grown Imported
Direct from Ceylon', but after an analysis had been done he had to
admit there was only 3o per cent Ceylon tea in the pack. No prosecution followed.
X substantial part in stoking up interest in Ceylon tea in Britain
was naturally played by those tireless propagandists the planters
1 One firm (unnamed) went further and is alleged to have kept a whole arsenal
of well-known estate name stencils for use as and when required.
171
.0;
themselves, whether in session in Kandy, on home leave, or retired.1

The question of a formal advertising campaign was canvassed, but as
has happened more than once in later years, the mirage of 'new outlets' outshone the more prosaic prospect of increasing sales in a
market where Ceylon already seemed to be doing so well. This came
out very clearly in a resolution passed by the Ceylon Association
(27 January 189o) after considering correspondence with the advertising agents, Messrs Willings:
'That the committee are of opinion that it would be advantageous to
advertise in the U.K. as proposed; but that if an opening could be found
for effectual advertisement in Russia, the United States, Canada or the
Colonies, the benefit to Ceylon tea growers would probably be greater.'
In default of advertising, what alternatives were there? Exhibition
work of course, as will be described later on. And then, what about
setting up a planters' agency for the sale of Pure Ceylon Tea in the
Mother Country? In 1891 the P.A. did go so far as to appoint Mr
George I. Jamieson as their agent in Lancashire, but quickly backpedalled on this. Murmurs from the trade perhaps?
However, quite a number of retired planters established small
'agencies' on their own account. Among them was John Tyndall, who
was reported to have had 'two baronets' working for him on commission in the 189os; another (unnamed) had rooms in the City where
good Ceylon tea was served to the public free of charge between 4 and
5 every afternoon at 'little tables with pretty china'.
Now and then an opening for economical promotion arose in the
catering field. We have the text of an interesting agreement negotiated
between Mr F. R. Saunders for the Ceylon Association and Messrs
J. Lyons, caterers to the newly opened Imperial Institute in 1893.
By this, the caterers undertook, in exchange for a cash subsidy of
30o the first year, to supply Ceylon tea 'and none other' throughout
the Institute and its grounds; to advertise the fact to all corners;
and to buy the tea from the Association or from someone approved
by it. The price to Messrs Lyons was to be is. 8d. per lb. and
to the public 3d. per cup or small teapot in packet form, 23. od.
per lb.
Of course, there were times when some eager Ceylon man got a
brush-off. Mr Mountsteven Bremer, of Tientsin Estate, had the
bright idea of tackling the great Mr Horniman (whose father pioneered
packet tea), with Ceylon projects and sales literature. He was optimis1 The promotion of Ceylon tea generally is dealt with in Chapter 12 et seq.
172

tic about the outcome, but only until the post brought the following
a few days later:
No. 29-33 Wormwood Street
3oth December, 1890
Dear Mr Bremer,
In reply to your enquiry I cannot entertain your proposal about the
introduction of Ceylon tea as such, as from knowledge of the trade in
tea in England and the Continent it would not answer.
If you will call on Mr J. R. Manning of 9 Bridge Street, Westminster,
one of our Directors, he will hand you the papers you left there recently.
I am, Sir, etc.
F. G. HORNIMAN
It would be amusing to know whether Mr Horniman took any part
in the strange but gratifying series of events which brought the
London auctions such prominence and Ceylon tea such fame a few
months later. This was the series of sales in which so-called 'Golden
Tips' tea from various estates fetched fantastic prices which (charity
auctions apart) have never been equalled since.
Perhaps the following paragraphs from the Pall Mall Gazette of
x3 March 1891 are as good an introduction as any:
'An Enormous Price for Ceylon Tea
Unusual excitement prevailed on Tuesday in Mincing Lane, on the
offering by Messrs Gow Wilson and Stanton, tea-brokers, in public
auction, of a small lot of Ceylon tea from the Gartmore estate in Maskeliya (Mr T. C. Anderson). This tea possesses extraordinary quality in
liquor, and is composed almost entirely of small "golden tips", which
are the extreme ends of the small succulent shoots of the plant, and the
preparation of such tea is, of course, most costly. Competition was of a
very keen description.
'The bidding, which was pretty general to start with, commenced
with an offer of Li, Is. od. per lb.; as the price advanced to 8 many
buyers dropped out, and at this price about five wholesale dealers were
willing to purchase. Offers were then made up to about 9, 9s. od. by
three of the leading houses, the tea being ultimately knocked down to the
"Mazawattee Ceylon Tea Company" at the most extraordinary and
unprecedented price of CIO, I28. 6d. per lb.'
The description of this tea, though given in non-technical terms,
is quite adequate. The presence of 'tip', which is in fact the leaf-bud
at the top of the 'two leaves and a bud', has always been prized by
tea-tasters, though at least as much on grounds of appearance as of
173

flavour. `Tippy' or 'Flowery' teas (such grades as Flowery Orange
Pekoe) are still made in Ceylon and fetch high prices for the Middle
East market. As the writer remarks, they are obviously far more
expensive to produce than the run-of-the-mill grades, since they
involve sorting out the tip by hand.
The sale reported above took place on xo March, but four days
later a letter in the Grocer vehemently makes clear that this was not
the first of these Golden Tips sales:
`THE FINEST TEA
Referring to the small consignment of is pounds of Ceylon tea, sold
on Tuesday, (March loth 1891) at ire., 12s. 6d. a pound, the tea is
undoubtedly a very choice specimen, and does great credit to the
Manager of the Gartmore Estate where it was produced. So much
interest, however, is being evinced in the growth of fine tea from Ceylon,
that my Directors think it right it should be known that the tea in
question, which sold at such an astounding price, is admittedly largely
inferior in quality, both in leaf and liquor, to the consignment sold in
sale a few weeks since at LI., 7s. od. a pound from the Gallebodde
estate. . . .
'Up to the present the golden-tip Ceylon tea from the Gallebodde
estate, which my Directors purchased a few weeks since, and have now
in their possession is, beyond doubt, the finest tea ever yet grown, and
is admitted to be so by the leading tea brokers in the market.
I am, etc.
F. T. PRITCHETT, Sec.
United Kingdom Tea Company (Ltd.)
2I Mincing Lane, E.C.'
An editorial in the same issue shows that the Gallebodde sale had
taken place on 17 January. In another column a correspondent gives
an eye-witness account of the Gartmore affair 'a round of cheering,
a waving of hats and loud bursts of laughter' and adds that one of
the under-bidders had wanted to obtain the tea as 'A centre of
attraction in the Chicago Exhibition which is to be held in a year or
two'. Mr Pritchett's letter brought a heated rejoinder from Mazawattee and correspondence continued briskly during the next few
weeks.
The whole affair, of course, caused 'unusual excitement' in Ceylon
as well as Mincing Lane; Gallebodde and Gartmore were not going
to be allowed to get away with this. On 5 May Messrs W. J. & H.
Thompson offered a box containing four i-lb. packages of even more
174

golden Golden Tips from Havilland in Kegalla and this was knocked
down at 17 per lb. to the well-known Glasgow grocer, Mr Stuart
Cranston, bidding in person. Back came Gartmore on 7 May 25, zos. od. (Plate 21a); then followed Kellie (Dolosbage) 3a, and
finally on 25 August 'Tommy' Lipton's Nahakettia hit the jackpot
with 36, 15s. od.
However, that was the end of the 'Golden Tips' boom, to which
`the Grocer' for 12 September provides an epitaph: 'Several lots of
fancy teas offered have met scarcely any bids and this move in the
trade seems to have collapsed'.
Thereafter Ceylon tea went on its orthodox way, with steadily
increasing quantities coming forward, and prices keeping more or
less in line with the general market trends.
r.
175
Chapter .r.r
THE PLANTERS GET ORGANISED

To the Secretary of State's question, 'Who are these coffee planters
who are beginning to agitate Ceylon?', the answer might be: 'A
turbulent hill tribe, probably of Bohemian or Bulgarian origin,
constantly on the borders of insurrection, but showing vague signs
of a crude civilisation by a hankering after roads, bridges and other
visionary impossibilities'.
note of who uttered these ironical remarks, and when, has

vanished and without either of those excuses which have
as familiar as the face of my typewriter: 'Lost in the
....
VI
become
Y
Blitz' or 'Eaten by white ants'. But they have a Shandean ring and
they sum up rather well the relationship between the planting interest
and the Central Government all through Ceylon's Colonial period.
This relationship is best traced in the history of the Planters'
Association of Ceylon, though of course it shows up in many other
contexts.
The P.A. (as it shall be called for the rest of this chapter) was
founded on 17 February 1854. Thus its centenary preceded that of
the Ceylon tea industry by 13 years and was marked by, among other
things, an excellent publication which has made the task of the present
historian lighter. The Association's Proceedings have also been kept
in convenient form, and the temptation to quote lively but irrelevant
scandal from the correspondence annexed to each volume has been
severe.
The founding fathers were actually business partners the famous
George Wall (whose personal fortunes have already been briefly
traced) and Captain Keith Jolly. The latter was yet another of those
master mariners who found a permanent anchorage in Ceylon; he
planted on Fairieland ('Jally Durai Totum') and elsewhere in the
Kandy district, as well as being a partner in George Wall & Co. Like
Wall himself (ten times chairman of the P.A.) Captain Jolly was a
deeply respected character in the island `the soul of honour, ever
generous and kind-hearted', says the Tropical Agriculturist.1 Two
1 He is said to have been a poet as well, and to have written a rhymed account of
coffee planting in Ceylon under the name of Àliquie. But I have not come by a
copy.
176

other men of the same stamp who helped to get the P.A. moving were
Alexander ('Sandy') Brown and R. B Tytler. Brown, an extremely
ambitious Scots planter who once controlled ai estates but came to
financial grief in the end, was the Association's first Secretary, while
Tytler shared with Jolly, Wall and H. Byrde (son of H. C.) the main
burden of the Presidency up to the end of the I86os.
At first, the offices of Chairman, Secretary and Representative on
the Legislative Council were more or less passed round the circle,
but in 1876 the P.A. acquired its first permanent Secretary, A. Philip,
who did the job right up till 1904 on an honorarium of Rs. 1500 per
annum. Following the Wall era, some famous later names, still
remembered in Ceylon, were those of J. L. Shand (Chairman 1879188o), L. Kelly (Chairman through three crowded years, 1888-90) and
R. B. Downall. The latter was a somewhat exceptional figure in that
although a proprietary planter on a large scale (we have met him
as owner of Dambatenne in its pre-Lipton phase), he became the
trusted representative of the planters in the Legislative Council
without having held any previous office in the P.A. He had three
spells altogether as Planting Member between 1877 and the year of
his death (1888), when he was still only 45 years of age. It was the
Downall Memorial Fund, together with an unexpended portion of
the money raised at the time of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, that formed
the nucleus of the present Planters' Benevolent Fund.
The objective of the P.A. can be stated with extreme simplicity to fight for the planting interest. This does not mean that their
motives were wholly selfish; anticipating General Motors, these men'
believed without a shadow of cynicism that what was good for the
planters was good for Ceylon. Every road extension, every new
bridge which the 'turbulent hill tribe' could extort from a parsimonious Treasury was, in their eyes, a miniature victory for Progress
and Civilisation.
In a sense they were fortunate in starting their campaign just when
the effects of the first coffee slump were wearing off. Their product
was making the major contribution to Ceylon's revenue, and they
could advocate development expenditure with a good conscience.
The result was that the road system of Central Ceylon was pushed
forward with energy during the 185os, and there were even dreams of
1 And not they only. The very phrase, remarkably enough, was used by one of
the most progressive of Governors. 'There need be no conflict of interest - that is,
what is good for the planter is good for Ceylon, and what is good for Ceylon is
good for the planter' - Sir West Ridgeway, just before taking up office, I5 January
1895.
M
177

Ceylon having its first railway (Colombo to Kandy) but this had to
wait a decade for fulfilment.
However, this honeymoon period did not last. Sir Charles
McCarthy arrived as Governor in 186o, briefed by the home Government to save as much money as possible on the Civil vote so as to
increase Ceylon's contribution to Imperial Defence.
Unluckily for officialdom, the planters had a few years earlier
received their privilege of nominating a member to the Legislative
Council. In spite of its title, this body acted much more like a Privy
Council to the Governor who, with the aid of the Official Members,
had no difficulty in rail-roading through whatever legislation he
wanted. But he could not silence the non-officials! George Wall
resigned twice, the first time being in 1859 on this very question. He
raged against the expenditure of public money before it had been
properly voted upon, and on the constitutional point thought it
utterly wrong that the Governor should preside at Legislative Council
meetings 'the dignity of his position would be rather augmented
than diminished by his retirement from a place where the influence
of his presence paralyses all freedom of action and expression'. Old
'Sandy' Brown hurled solid rocks 'the Legislative Council is a
farce . . . we might as well send an Egyptian mummy to represent us
at the Council Board as the best man we could select and we are
not wanting in men'.
Yet what was the alternative? The wise Sir Henry Ward (Governor
1855-6o) answered George Wall in terms still topical in the world
today. Pointing out that he had no power to alter the proportion
between official and non-official members, still less to initiate any
kind of constitution based on Electoral Districts, he forced the
planters to face the stark meaning of 'One Man One Vote' in a colony
which consisted of 'six or eight hundred European settlers a small
but intelligent class of Burghers and two millions of Cingalese,
Tamils and Moormen, equal to the Europeans in all legal rights but
wholly unaccustomed to the working of a constitutional system'.
The planters were not appeased; there was a sharp clash in 186z
when the Governor appointed Captain Jolly as planters' representative without getting the P.A.'s by-your-leave; Jolly withdrew, and
the Governor, gracefully enough, accepted the nomination of R. j.
Corbet in his place. Three years later there was a more serious crisis,
when George Wall (by now representing the Chamber of Commerce)
led his five unofficial colleagues out of the Council on the issue of
Ceylon's military contribution. He then founded the Ceylon League
178

for the specific purpose of securing a reform of the Council. At first
there was widespread support, but in the later 186os a new Governor,
Sir Hercules Robinson, set on foot a highly popular programme of
public works, thereby choking the protestants with honey.
As so often happens, a closer reading of minutes and correspondence reveals an unconfessed identity of aims between the practical
men on both sides. Step by step, Central Ceylon obtained a system
of roads which, according to an astonished observer in the late 188os,
were 'invariably of splendid construction, equalling if they do not
surpass the finest Swiss or Norwegian ones'. Railway progress, to
which the P.A. quite rightly attached paramount importance, was
slower, but thanks to a voluntary export tax of al per cent on all
produce leaving Ceylon, proposed by the planters themselves, the
superb Colombo to Kandy line was opened in 1867. An extension to
Nawalapitiya, at the gateway so to speak of the central planting
district, followed, after which the planters happily turned their attention to badgering Governor after Governor to continue the line into
Dimbula and even beyond which eventually was done.
When tea came on the scene, the P.A. naturally acted as a 'pressure
group' on behalf of the new product, a typical instance being the
struggle (eventually successful) to get railway rates on tea assimilated
to coffee. The latter had the advantage of being transmitted in jute
hessian bags, whereas ioo lb. of tea was burdened with a tare (i.e.
container weight) of no less than 3o lb., tea chests being then made of
solid timber with sheet-lead linings; by a tiresome railway regulation
they had to be hooped as well. This problem took up a lot of Committee time round about 189o.
At the same period the planters went into action on an issue which
could hardly have been better calculated to raise their fighting spirit.
Until its own industry got going, Ceylon was naturally an importer
of tea, but always from China, not her neighbour India which
throws a sudden light on James Taylor's ambition to produce a
flavour 'like the China tea sold in the shops'. In 1874, when the first
Loolecondera 'make' was being successfully hawked round Kandy,
Ceylon imported 74,682 lb. of China tea, mostly through Hong Kong,
though A. M. Ferguson boldly and accurately forecast that 'within
a decade Ceylon would be a net exporter of tea'.
Meanwhile, an import duty of a cents per lb. protected the young
industry and all went well until the mid-189os, when an agitation
against the duty arose in South India.
The argument began in 1894, when the Planters' Association itself
179

had been playing with the idea of a bonded warehouse in Colombo
where tea could be blended for export, but took fright over the danger
of possible fraud. The following year the United Planters' Association
of South India wrote to the Governor of Ceylon, suggesting that the
import duty operated very injuriously against tea-growers in Solith
India, that Ceylon possessed a market from which they were shut
out and that this was in fact the 'natural market' for South Indian
tea. They therefore urged the repeal of the duty 'not only in the
interests of the planters of South India, but also in those of Ceylon
itself'.
Something in this, thought the Colonial Secretary, and passed
the idea on to Kandy. The Planters' Association Secretary's reply
(23 September 1895) was in unambiguous terms!
'The desire of the Ceylon Planting and Mercantile Communities is
that the Duty may not be removed or changed in any way, because, while
acting as in some measure a protection against South India tea being
re-exported as Ceylon tea, it in no way hinders South Indian planters
selling their produce in the Colombo market in bond. This is in fact
now done, and the statement made by the United Planters' Association
that their teas are "shut out" is therefore inaccurate. . . .
'I would press also that the planting community of Ceylon have for
years now been spending time, labour, and money in pushing their teas
as Ceylon teas throughout the world, South India having done nothing
to push her own teas. . . . I therefore trust that His Excellency will not
grant the request of the United. Planters' Association of South India.'
That was that, but South India tried again at least twice in 1902
and 1905-6. The affair reached top level as the result of a Parliamentary Question at Westminster on 28 March 1906. Lord Elgin (Secretary of State for the Colonies) put it to the Planters' Association that
by preventing the blending of tea in bond, the Ceylon producers were
depriving themselves of an additional market. Against this, Mr Edward Rosling brought forward the interesting argument that the chief
export of blended tea would be to Australia, and if a popular blend
were produced India would probably get so per cent of sales instead
of the current proportions of 24. million lb. Ceylon against i6 million
Indian. And once more the Planters' Association view prevailed.
But, apart from such controversies, the P.A. had two major preoccupations. The first, persisting from its earliest days until now, was
the recruitment, regulation and welfare of immigrant labour from
South India; the second blew up, so to speak, in the x88os the
180

publicising of Ceylon tea in new markets all over the world. Both
these have their own place in this narrative, and I will only say here
that a study of the documents astonishes one with the amount of
detailed hard work on highly technical subjects which this little group
of planters achieved.
`Little group' indeed as in all such organisations, a handful of
enthusiasts carried go per cent of the burden. In the earlier days, the
membership of the various committees was naturally recruited from
Kandy and its immediate neighbourhood. Wall and Jolly had their
business headquarters in the town, Tytler and Byrde planted only a
few miles away, and soon the names of Gavin, Leake and Harrison,
all members of the Kandy agency house Keir, Dundas & Co. appeared
on the list of office holders. Even so, the attendance was often barely
at quorum strength. Up till 1867, it must be remembered, there was
no possible means for an outlying member to get to Kandy except on
or behind a horse, and even when the first railway line was opened it
only served a handful of planting districts. But perhaps the `Kandyan
princes' hung on a little too long anyway, when George Wall sent
out a circular about poor attendance in 1883, an anonymous letter in
the local Press retorted that the only reason why H.Q. remained at
Kandy at all, instead of being moved to Colombo, was to suit the
Committee members 'mostly V.A.s in the neighbourhood'; the
ordinary planter from Dimbula, Dickoya or Maskeliya could seldom
afford the time to spend a night in the 'country village', whereas he
nearly always had other business to do in Colombo, and even when
he hadn't, could be sure of a sea breeze and a fish dinner!
Apart from this genuine difficulty, there was a good deal of parochial
jealousy of what was sometimes cattily referred to as the 'Kandy
Association'. Uva, Haputale and other local associations either
seceded, threatened to secede or were disaffiliated at various times.
As a sop, the experiment was tried from 1887 onwards of holding
some meetings at Nuwara Eliya instead of at Kandy in order to lure
the men of Uva to attend; but the men of Uva stayed on their hilltops and the arrangement was scrapped in 1895. In that same year,
by the way, a rather amusing nonsense was made of the title of the
famous Thirty Committee by a decision to reduce its quorum from
7 to 5!
Partly for such reasons, it was several decades before the Association became anything like a representative body; several times it
nearly died, and there were periods, particularly between 186o and
1870, when the good old simile of a stage army certainly applied,
181
with the devoted nucleus marching round and round the scenery
uttering loud cries to intimidate the Governor.
Dislike of Kandy as a centre seems to have died down eventually at any rate there was general support for the project of putting up a
new Headquarters building there to commemorate Queen Victoria's
Diamond Jubilee. This was opened in 1900. It incorporated tributes
to several of the pioneers, including a Ferguson Hall and George Wall
Memorial Tower. Unfortunately, there had been trouble with the
foundations from the start, and structural defects caused the building
to be demolished after less than forty years of useful life.' The P.A.
members, so skilful at growing tea on rock, seem to have planted their
house upon the sand. . . .
And here the local organisation of the planters deserves a note.
`Planting Districts' are decidedly baffling, and for readers unfamiliar
with the terrain the map at the end of the book will offer only partial
clarification. The term began to be used very early, much as, in the
county of Kent, one might speak of a man farming 'on Romney
Marsh' or 'in the Isle of Thanet'. By 1857 the P.A.'s Statistical
Committee had got around to defining the districts 'according to what
the planters generally recognised', but using 'either large rivers or
well-known mountain ranges as boundaries, except where natural
boundaries would intersect an estate'. There were further revisions in
187x and 1894. Yet no official map of the planting districts is now
current, and the fact is that they are really defined by what estates
are in them, rather than the other way round.
At the beginning of our centenary period the districts numbered 29,
practically all of which are still recognised today, though the total
has been more than doubled and 46 of them have Boo acres of tea or
over. There was never a local Association for each district; in a
typical grouping of the 188os, Badulla Association covered five
districts (Badulla, Passara, Madulsima, Hewa Eliya and Narangalla)
and today Badulla is itself only one of three Sub-Districts of the Uva
Association, the others being Passara and Haputale. In fact, with
everyone able to dash about in cars, the tendency all the time is
towards fewer and larger units, and the number of Associations has
now shrunk from 27 in the early 19oos to 14 Dickoya, Dimbula,
Hewaheta, Kalutara, Kandy, Kegalle, Kelani Valley, Kurunegala,
Morawak Korale, Nuwara Eliya, Pussellawa, Sabaragamuwa,
Southern Province and Uva.
1 After six years in temporary offices at Kandy, the P.A. moved to Colombo in
1g47. The present admirable building off Kollupitya Road was opened ten years
later.
182

I have browsed through many volumes of district P.A. Minute
Books of which the earliest, Rakwana (now absorbed into Sabaragamuwa), goes back to 1877. My impression is that, apart from the
perennial labour problem in all its changing forms, the local P.A.s
were at any rate in their earlier days less concerned with planting
than with public affairs on the parochial level complaints about
roads, railways and postal services and the like; no doubt, then (as
now) the members got down to the real 'shop' in more relaxed
surroundings afterwards.
f.
It is typical of the planters' brisk solicitude for everything which

might affect their industry that from very early times they wanted to
have their own representative in London their principal market as
well as the seat of Imperial power. In 1862 E. Rawdon Power was
appointed Agent; it is not clear how long he functioned, but 15 years
later the matter was being discussed as though for the first time.
Finally, in December 1877 comes a P.A. Committee minute:
`Considered the advisability of having a London agent and how such
an appointment should be made. Resolved that the committee recommend to the Association the appointment of Mr Wm. Martin Leake as
London Agent, and that a fee of 5o per annum, with expenses incurred
in the work entrusted to him, be allowed.'
The duties were a little vague indeed Leake was later to confess
that if he were asked what good he had done he would have had to
reply 'not much', but at least he had done no harm! Yet in person he
must have exactly fulfilled the demand which a group of eminent
retired planters had put forward in 1876 for an agent whose age,
social position and knowledge of official business ways should give
good hope of him being 'pleasantly received' by Civil Servants and the
like. What emerged during Leake's period as agent was that the real
need was for a representative body which would carry weight with
both the Government and the City.'
The planters rather naturally assumed that such a body would be
a 'London branch' of their own Association, and at their Annual
General Meeting held on 17 February 1888, a sub-committee put
forward for discussion a list of objectives which included keeping a
general watch over the interests of the planting enterprise in England,
and over Ceylon tea in connection with the Merchandise Marks Act.
1 Rawdon Power had gone to considerable lengths to canvass the idea of a Ceylon
Association as long ago as 1 864.
183

All members of the 'parent Association' would automatically be
members of the London Branch, though others could join by subscription; the London Branch would appoint its own office-bearers.
The meeting agreed that this paper should be forwarded to their
London agent for distribution among likely supporters of the new
branch, and then went on to a brisk argument on the financing of
prosecutions under the Merchandise Marks Act.
It was therefore with surprise, and some umbrage, that a lot of
honest planters heard less than three months later that, as the result
of a meeting held in the board room of the New Oriental Bank
Corporation on 3o April, a completely new organisation called 'The
Ceylon Association in London' had come into being.
It is not worth raking over this affair in detail today, but it is quite
clear that an influential group in London had made up their minds to
use the meeting, called ostensibly to establish a London branch of
the P.A., to bring an independent body into existence, and that those
present were rather skilfully stampeded in that direction. When the
news reached Kandy, the Committee of the P.A. saw that they must
accept a fait accompli which they did with the more reluctance since
it was accompanied by what in the circumstances was a rather bland
request for financial support. The correspondence rumbled on
through the summer and autumn; even in November Mr John
Hamilton, one of the founder members, while making the soothing
noises natural to one who was holding out his hat, had to state rather
firmly that 'the formation of a subordinate Branch of the Planters'
Association in London was found to be totally impracticable, as so
few men would have supported it'. However, as a cordial reference
in its annual report for i888 shows, the P.A. quickly realised the value
of an agency much more powerful than anything it could have
established itself.
But back to that inaugural meeting, which certainly attracted what
is called a 'large and representative attendance'. Press reports leave
the strong impression that, regardless of reservations at the Kandy
end, this was the moment of the Ceylon planting industry's emergence from the end of a very long tunnel, and that most of those
present knew it. James Whittall (in the chair) recalled how when he
left Ceylon in 1883 the prospects for coffee looked very bad and had
got worse, but when he went back in 1887 the 'pluck and energy' of
the planters had carried them through these trying times and there
was every reason to hope that the success of tea would become permanent. Another speaker, Sir Roper Lethbridge, M.P., contrasted
184

the 'heyday' of 1874 with the subsequent debacle and the present
tremendous hope for the future.
It was left to the unsinkable J. L. Shand to state the true reason
why a 'planters only' organisation would not have met the case, and
he did so with his usual comic force. Referring to the points of
divergence which made it difficult to bring the Ceylon producer and
the London merchant together, he went on:
`The planter was inclined to look upon the London merchant as
vampire-like, sucking his life blood in the shape of extortionate commissions, and watching to pounce on him the moment he failed to meet
an engagement; and the merchant looked upon the planter like the
horse-leech, ever crying for more money, whose estimates were magnificent, whose realisations were microscopic.'
Nevertheless, added Mr Shand hastily, there was a feeling that
planters and merchants must work together for mutual good.
From the very start `C.A.L.' (as it came to be called) was a Teaminded organisation. This is the more notable since the P.A.'s
original draft terms of reference, which spoke of 'watching the interests of the Ceylon planting enterprise', had been superseded by
something much grander 'the protection and furtherance of the
general interests of Ceylon'. This was on the ground that if they were
to make the necessary impression on the Secretary of State for the
Colonies and other bigwigs, they would need the support of a wider
circle. Yet the fact remains that apart from the General Committee,
the only standing body set up by the Association for several decades
was the Tea Committee, the appointment of which was moved by
Shand at the Inaugural Meeting.
It got down to business at once. Some of the subjects dealt with
during the first few sessions included the need for a reduction in the
tea duty; the labelling of Ceylon tea (in which we have seen C.A.L.
playing the active and expensive part of prosecutor); a dispute
with the wholesalers over the method of weighing tea at the warehouses; and that perennial theme, the 'prompt'. The latter is, of
course, the trade term for the 90 days which the purchaser was given
for paying for his teas. The growers at first tended to grumble, since
in coffee times the 'prompt' was only one month, but the balance of
C.A.L. opinion in 1883 was in favour of maintaining the system as an
encouragement to the trade to buy Ceylon's still rather small 'breaks'
of tea and maintained it was right up to 1966, when it was reduced
to 6o days.
185

In addition, the Tea Committee quickly began to act as the London
end of such bodies as the Thirty Committee of the P.A. and the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce in dealing with propaganda matters
during those very active years of Ceylon tea promotion, while C.A.L.
itself provided a convenient 'opposite number' to the Indian Tea
Association through alternating phases of co-operation and rivalry.
Only occasionally before 1914 did the Ceylon Association play the
major political part which its terms of reference seemed to envisage.
In fact the first President, Sir William Gregory, only took office on
condition that politics were excluded (the fighting men of the P.A.
did not like the sound of this at all and tried apparently in vain to
get a clarification). No doubt there was plenty of 'political' activity
in the broader sense, behind the scenes, but one of the few instances
of overt action was in a now forgotten dispute with the Imperial
Government over the extension of Ceylon's northern railway.
Naturally, Martin Leake, as Secretary, did all the chores. In the
Loolecondera story, for example, he not only organised the London
subscription list for James Taylor's presentation but he had to trot
round to Mappin & Webb to choose the silver tea and coffee set,
get it inscribed (the P.A. civilly exonerated him from blame for a
misprint), and make the intricate arrangements for packing and dispatch. He was, in fact, the P.A.'s one-man agency house, as well as
the faithful servant of C.A.L., and it was all done virtually for nothing;
the accounts show that he carried on for over 20 years on a salary of
Limo per annum, administrative expenses of 200 and, from i888 to
1902, no paid clerical help of any kind. The truth is that, as with the
P.A. itself, the àdmin' side of C.A.L. was always remarkably modest,
as may be deduced from its grateful acceptance of a subsidy of L6o
granted, after that initial hesitation, by the P.A. A further 50 was
put up by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (who also refused first
time round) on condition that a room, available to its members,
should be opened in the City.
The level of activity in C.A.L.'s General and Tea Committees, as
revealed in their reports, varied much in pre-1914 days; this might
seem mysterious till one begins to correlate it with the price of tea!
Because of the unique selling system of the industry, whereby lots
from individual estates compete in public auction week by week,
everyone is intensely conscious of the 'price per lb.' factor from the
planter who manages to get a cent or two ahead of his neighbour on
the opposite hill, to the London buying broker doing battle for his
clients in terms of a farthing per lb. Great companies, with capital
186

running into millions, assess their entire output in similar terms, and
finally the corporate mind of the whole industry is soothed or agitated
as this particular barometer moves up or down.
C.A.L. itself once summed up the matter in a gently ironic sentence
with which we may conclude its early history:
'The average price for Ceylon tea for 1911, 8fcl. per lb., was higher
than in any year since 1893. In this happy state of things there have
been . . . no perplexing questions with reference to Tea Interests to
occupy the attention of the Committee.'
The Planters' Association and the Ceylon Association in London
occupy an unchallenged position as champions of the planting interest
in all its branches; nevertheless, the rather complicated structure of
the industry has led at various times to individual sections setting up
representative bodies of their own. Proprietary planters and London
tea companies, estate superintendents and agency houses it has
sometimes seemed as though no one organisation could speak for
them all, and the problem took some time to sort out.
The first such move was the founding in 1913 of the Ceylon Estate
Agents' Association, under Chamber of Commerce auspices, its
duties being to look after the interests of Colombo firms in their
capacity as agents for estates. This functioned until 1921, when discussions began on a possible amalgamation with the P.A.'s own
Proprietors' Committee which had been set up two years before.
Thence arose a new and powerful body, the Ceylon Estates Proprietary Association so powerful indeed that like the P.A. it was
allowed a nominee to the Legislative Council.1
For the next 24 years the P.A. and the C.E.P.A. functioned side by
side and usually in close co-operation, but there was always talk of
reuniting the two bodies. Though World War II held up negotiations,
in May 1947 the C.E.P.A. was, in fact, dissolved and its members were
enrolled in what is now the Agency Section of the P.A. This happy
outcome, which brought the P.A. back to its old fully representative
status, was a substantial influence towards the removal of headquarters to Colombo.
All such privileges lapsed with the coming of Independence, but the GovernorGeneral has the power to appoint a certain number of Members of Parliament to
represent particular interests. There is now one European Member appointed in this
way, and the fact that at the time of writing he is one of the leading figures in the
tea industry, Mr R. Singleton-Salmon, provides a link with the days of George
Wall.
187

All this fully took care of ownership interests, but did not quite
cater for the rank-and-file on the management side the `P.D.s' and
`S.D.s' who had become an ever more numerous class as proprietary
planting declined. To put it crudely, they felt they needed a 'trade
union'. Various attempts were made by the P.A. to fill the gap, but
finally in 1936, after much agitation conducted mainly in the columns
of the Times of Ceylon, there came into existence the quite separate
Ceylon Planters' Society. Its terms of reference were to promote 'the
personal and professional interests of planters while endeavouring to
co-operate with and ensure the prosperity of proprietors'. As we
shall see, the Tea Estate staffs had suffered heavily during the slump
of the early 193os, and from the start one of the main activities of the
Society was to ensure fair retirement terms for the members. The
Society operates through an elaborate system of local branches and
there is no doubt that it has done invaluable service to the working
planters.
A number of highly important bodies which had their origins in
the capacious bosom of the P.A. are dealt with in other chapters the
Tea Research Institute, the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board, the
Ceylon Estates Employers' Federation, and of course it had off-shoots
dealing with other planting products such as rubber and coconut
which lie outside the scope of this book. But I would like to give two
examples of organisations, established by the P.A., which were a boon
to Ceylon and set the pace for action by Government.
The first was the Ceylon Labour Commission and its Coast
Agency, evolved to cope with the problem of imported labour which
we have met at every turn in our history.
This long-adumbrated scheme came into being in 1904. The first
Commissioner was Mr Norman Rowsell and the terms of reference
given to him provide an excellent summary of what the P.A. had been
trying to do all along for its immigrant labour and what the Coast
Agency largely achieved:
I. The cleansing of the system of recruitment and the elimination
of malpractices.
z. Improvement of supervision and protection of emigrants on
their journey.
3. Encouragement of the connection between the labourer on his
estate and the labourer in his village.
4. Social welfare work and supervision of the interests in India of
those who had emigrated to Ceylon.
Headquarters were set up at Trichinoply in the Madras Presidency
188

and local offices established to which the rather undesirable class of
professional recruiters had to bring their gangs of labourers, so that
the Commission's officers could make sure that the latter were not
being exploited. These officers did not themselves engage in recruitment, but made sure that all workers and their families going to
Ceylon were well received, fed and dispatched it was a down-toearth job, going deep into the life of the South Indian villages from
which generations of workers had been travelling to the estates of
Ceylon. In 1912 Mr Rowsell was succeeded by Major H. Scoble
Nicholson, whose name ought never to be forgotten for the progress
he achieved in this most difficult field.
Liaison with both the Ceylon and Indian Governments was, of
course, an important part of the Commission's functions, and the time
inevitably came when it could no longer continue as a purely private
organisation. It is a great tribute to the P.A. and to Scoble Nicholson
that when rules agreed under the Indian Emigration Act of 1922 made
it necessary for the Ceylon Government to appoint an Emigration
Commissioner in South India, the P.A.'s own Commissioner was
chosen to occupy the post in a dual capacity, and his staff was put at
the Government's disposal. The arrangement, though frequently
criticised, worked remarkably well. When in later years the flow of
recruitment ceased, the Commission operated mainly as a welfare
body, helping the Tamil worker with his legal disputes, pension problems, and all the difficulties over remittances which have arisen from
Ceylon's increasingly severe exchange control.
In this connection we should mention one quite outstanding
achievement by the P.A. the abolition of the `tundu' in 1921. This
system whereby a labourer's indebtedness, often contracted before
he ever left India and increased by subsequent advances, was transferred from one employer to another when he changed his job, was
onerous to the workers and incredibly tiresome in operation a
regular Old Man of the Sea to the whole industry. There were times
when it almost dominated local P.A. proceedings, as the minute books
show. For decades the planters felt they could not possibly afford to
cancel this muddled mass of indebtedness, but in 1921, by which
time it had reached the fantastic figure of 4,000,000, the plunge was
taken; Ordinance No. 43 wiped out all existing debts without compensation and penalised any attempt to revive the tundu.
My second example of initiative by the planters in the public or
semi-public field was the Malaria Control Scheme initiated by the
Ceylon Estates Proprietary Association.
189

In this case a Government Malariologist, H. F. Carter, had already
been at work for two or three years when the Ceylon Association in
London, increasingly worried over the incidence of malaria on
estates, invited the famous Sir Ronald Ross to address them (1925).
The sequel was that Sir Ronald was asked to go to Ceylon, make a
survey and suggest remedial action. He was quickly convinced that
self-help by the estates could bring down the incidence of the disease
considerably. Accordingly, the C.E.P.A.'s control scheme was
inaugurated in 1926. Although the problem was mainly a Lowcountry one, many Up-country estates were among the 30o which
gave financial support pro bono publico.
From then onwards the story was one of alternate advance and
setback, hope and despair and then hope again. H. F. Carter had
already established that the mosquito Anophelis culicifacies was
Ceylon's sole vector of the disease and that the outbreaks were worse
when there was not enough rain to wash the larvae out of the rivers
and streams where it bred. Oiling the main rivers was the remedy
first tried, but during the financial stringency of 1931 there was a
switch to medical treatment which it was hoped would keep the
labour force healthy. Then came the partial failure of both the southwest and north-east monsoons in 1934 and a malaria outbreak of
historic severity. Oiling was resumed and in the face of much doubt
and criticism the Executive Committee of the Scheme pressed forward with this and other amelioratives. Government itself introduced
an Emergency Oiling Scheme, but the failure to operate it quickly
enough during a drought in 1939 caused great dismay among the
local Planters' Associations. The C.E.P.A. scheme was placed on a
permanent footing in 1941 and District Committees were set up to
co-operate with the Government service.
It is a matter of history how the coming of D.D.T. after World
War II finally conquered malaria Ceylon being 'the extreme and
well-known instance', as Sir Solly Zuckerman calls it,' of the virtual
elimination of a disease by control methods. With malaria out of the
way, the name of the C.E.P.A. scheme became the Planters' Association Estates Health Scheme, and it was given a wide brief to improve
health and sanitary conditions among the workers.
A word with regard to bodies outside the orbit of the P.A. which
nevertheless have great importance in the planting industry. One of
these is the Low-country Products Association which celebrated its
Golden Jubilee in 1959. It was started by Ceylonese planters and
Sunday Times, London, zo February 1966.
190

businessmen who felt they must put their special needs and proposals
before the then Colonial Government. As the name implies, most of
its membership is found in the Low-country and, in consequence,
there is much more emphasis on rubber and coconut than on tea.
Nevertheless, the Association is represented on many such bodies as
the Tea Research Institute and the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board.
Among substantial reforms in which the L.C.P.A. took a leading
part was the establishment of the Bank of Ceylon in 1938, the Association being highly conscious of the need for a State-aided bank to
supply credit facilities to Ceylonese agriculturists and businessmen.
Again, the Association was as ardent for railway expansion in its own
sphere of influence, the Low-country, as the Planters' Association
was on behalf of the Central Highlands. Though, as already stated,
the Association was founded because it had been felt that the interests
of Ceylonese planters were not sufficiently represented, today there
is a strong community of interest between its members and those of
the P.A. and the Chamber of Commerce, and there are many occasions on which they go into action jointly; its close co-operation with
the P.A. was happily symbolised a few years ago when one of its past
Chairmen, Senator Thomas Amarasurya, became in turn the first
Ceylonese Chairman of the P.A. This reminds us that the L.C.P.A.
has always had distinguished men to guide it, including its virtual
founder, Sir James Peiris, and the first Prime Minister of Ceylon,
Mr. D. S. Senanayake.
Finally, there is the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, founded as
long ago as 1839 we first met it needling the Government about
cinnamon in 1853! Throughout the tea story, its influence has been
pervasive, whether acting jointly with the P.A. on the Thirty Committee, or fostering the Colombo Tea Traders' Association and the
auctions, or taking the lead in ad hoc action over problems common
to growers and exporters alike. There are several other Chambers in
modern Ceylon, but the original Chamber of Commerce, venerable
but still extremely active, must take precedence of them all.
This has been a chapter of Associations and Committees a

plethora of them perhaps, but that is how the world's work gets done.
We owe them a great deal. I am thinking particularly of the old P.A.
lot up in Kandy, battling away at their numberless Committee and
sub-Committee meetings, often called for Saturday afternoons. As
we have seen, a quorum was always scraped together despite all
191

counter-attractions professional, sporting and even convivial. In
the minutes of a meeting held on zo June 1874 is the evocative
sentence 'We believe the small attendance was caused in some
measure by farewell entertainments in the jungle'.
192
9. Planting celebrities at old Mattakelle Bungalow in (?) 1872. Centre (bow tie) is A. M.
Ferguson of the Ceylon Observer, with the Governor, Sir William Gregory, standing behind
him. Further back on Gregory's right is G. A. D. Elphinstone (Logic) and on his left
William Smith (Mattakelle); then (?) E. Smyth (Great Western) and the two Heelis brothers
(Langdale and Carlabeck). On Ferguson's right is R. V. Dunlop (Oriental Bank) and two
away from him on his left I. Darley (Somerset) and George Smith (Dessford). In front
(sitting) A. H. Thomas (Cymru) and W. B. Henderson (Waltrim), with H. M. Evatt.
to. Dhoby's house at Loolecondera, almost certainly James Taylor's first 'tea-house'. The
square gap in the retaining wall was where the stream was brought down to the water-wheel.
The path just above leads to the site of Taylor's bungalow.
r la, i rb. Above, weighing tea outside one of the converted coffee 'stores', still in use as tea
factories long after Taylor had built his tea-house. Below, one of the giant factories of today
(Darnbatenne).
-"iml11111111111111q!
I 416411,,
.....
tz. In January 1888, the Graphic published these pictures from sketches made on
L. K. Van Dort's Blackstone Estate. They show (r) Use of transplanting-iron,
(z) Roll-call, (3) Pruning, (4) Pluckers at work, (5) Rolling (possibly with a converted coffee or rice machine), (6) Building withering tats, (7) Fermenting, (8) Drying, (`Sorocco' No. ), (g) Picking-over, (to) Bulking, (i I) Packing, (zz) Despatch
by bullock wagon, (13) At the railway station.
13a. Primitive sorting!

Probably one of those
improvisations praised
by William Cameron
in the '8os.
t.:,iroits .L
13b. Trough-withering in St. Joachim factory.
14a. Leaf brought down by

wire shoota method now
in decline.
14b. Knapsack-type mechanical plucker from Japan, on test at the Tea Research Institute.
/5. Elephants still play a useful part in pulling out old tea bushes. This energetic lady was
at work on Harangalla Estate in 1966. Get Steady . . . Heave . . . Ho! ... Triumph!
16a. Tea estate family.

16b. Estate school playground.
Chapter 12
THE BIRTH OF CEYLON

TEA PROMOTION
'Join the Tea Set!'
TEA PROMOTION SLOGAN, 1965
HERE are times when writers, like politicians, should 'declare

an interest'. The auspices under which this book has been
written have been made quite clear in the Preface, but a personal
note is also unavoidable. In the year 1945 I joined what was then
called the Empire Tea Bureau in the U.K.; as an ex-journalist and
wartime official of the Ministry of Food, my new job was to edit the
Bureau's publications, which under the rationing conditions of the
time mainly related to better tea service for the public, especially in
industrial canteens. In Chapter 16 it will be told how the organisation
evolved into the Ceylon Tea Centre.
As a result I have been concerned mentally and operationally with the problem (fundamental to all tea propaganda) of 'one country
promotion' versus 'tea as tea'. Are they opposites or complementary?
If opposites, which has been and is of greater benefit to a country like
Ceylon? If complementary, how can they be harmonised to the best
advantage of Ceylon's industry and people?
Read on, and trace this thread through a story which began only
twelve years after James Taylor cleared a little plot of land for tea on
Loolecondera. Amazing, when you come to think of it! Here is a
plantation industry, supposed to be on its knees under the assaults of
the coffee blight, not only developing a new product full blast, but so
confident that it is already prepared to go out and tell the world!
The earliest promotional efforts by the Planters' Association of
Ceylon were of mixed character, featuring all the products that their
members grew. But there is no doubt that at the Melbourne International Exhibition of 188o and at Calcutta three years later, Ceylon
tea was forcefully promoted. Exercising strict impartiality, the planters invited Mr Ferguson of the Ceylon Observer and Mr Capper of the
Times of Ceylon to represent them at Melbourne and Calcutta respectively. While this was a compliment to the journalistic profession, I
am afraid it did not entirely bring out the higher natures of these two
excellent men.
rr
193

Ferguson having given columns of space to his own valiant deeds at
Melbourne, where Ceylon tea gained a higher proportion of medals
than India and Ferguson himself netted a gold watch, Rs. 10,000
and a C.M.G. as his reward, Capper could not resist a back-hander
when Calcutta came along. He published an article 'from a corresRondent' who said that the double aim there would be to make Ceylon
tea known to visitors in their thousands from all over the world and
to attract the attention of capitalists, especially from Australia, who
might be prepared to invest in Ceylon. He added that it was a pity the
Colombo Press did not devote more space to a sober assessment of
yield and profits instead of merely to the 'giant gooseberry' section
of the subject. Was not the record of the Ceylon Company, with an
average yield of only 135 lb. per acre from 1,00o acres of tea, as
worthy of a place in literature as those 'bushes of gigantic girth in
Dimbula'? Ah-ha, very subtle! Because Dimbula in this context
means Abbotsford, the Ferguson estate about whose bushes of
gigantic girth readers of the Observer (as I have discovered to my cost)
heard rather too much between 188o and 1885. So back came Ferguson with sarcastic queries about how you could hope to encourage
capitalists by publicising losses and Iow yields, and in this atmosphere
Calcutta was duly launched and seems to have
of sprightly
gone quite as well as Melbourne.
Both editors were, as a matter of fact, men of solid achievement.
John Capper we have already met in Chapter a, retailing high-class
prose to the readers of Household Words, and in other capacities
elsewhere. At the period we have now reached his two sons, H. H.
and Frank, were just about to give up coffee planting and join their
father in journalism. The Cappers did Ceylon tea good service, but
for sheer verbal horse-power they were nothing to the Fergusons.
The first member of this extraordinary family to land on the shores
of Ceylon was 'A. M.' (Alastair Mackenzie). He was born in remote
Wester Ross in 1816, a Scots country boy like James Taylor, and
never saw a railway train till 1863 (while passing through Bombay).
As a youth he sent 'poetical writings' to the Inverness Courier. These
brought him to the attention of the Rt. Hon. J. A. Stewart Mackenzie,
a member of the leading local family from which Ferguson derived
his second name, and when Stewart Mackenzie was made Governor of
Ceylon in 1837 he brought the young writer out with him as a sort of
Private Secretary. Within two years Ferguson had become a planting
pioneer of the most dauntless kind, surveying and clearing large areas
of forest round Namunukula Mountain in Uva, which later became
194
THE BIRTH OF CEYLON TEA PROMOTION

famous coffee and tea estates. In due course he acquired, as we have
seen, his own estate at Abbotsford, Dimbula.
Though he was very proud of this property, which remained in the
family until recently, the quill soon proved more attractive than the
pruning knife (as John Capper would no doubt have expressed it),
and in 1846 Ferguson found himself co-editor with Dr Christopher
Elliott of the Ceylon Observer. This journal was already deep-rooted
in Ceylon's dominant industry, since it had been started in 1834 as the
Colombo Observer and Commercial Advertiser by a group of merchants.
They were headed by E. J. Darley (of the future firm of Darley,
Butler & Co.), with the inevitable Colonel H. C. Byrde in close
attendance. John Ferguson, nephew of A. M., arrived in 1861 and
was made assistant editor of the Observer, which his uncle had bought
in 1859 when Dr Elliott, returning to his original profession, was
appointed Principal Civil Medical Officer of the island. John gradually took over from his uncle, though the latter continued to write and
plant and stride over the hills in an apparently indestructible manner
until 1892.
Other active Fergusons who can only be mentioned here are
William (brother of A. M. and father of John), Public Works Department official, botanist and friend of Thwaites and Emerson Tennent;
William junior, who compiled a list of the Birds of Ceylon with their
Sinhalese and Tamil names; A. M.'s sons A. M. junior, author of Inge
Var, that immortal young planters' guide to the Tamil language, and
Donald, the most scholarly of all the Fergusons and pre-eminent
authority on the Portuguese period of Ceylon. Finally, there was
John's son R. H. who succeeded him for a short time as editor of the
Observer, after which it passed into the hands of a group of European
Association members and thence to its present Ceylonese ownership.
I admit a sense of fatigue in contemplating the achievements of the
original Fergusons, uncle and nephew. Like every other writer on the
Ceylon tea industry, like every other writer on any aspect of modern
Ceylon whatsoever, I undeniably owe them a huge debt. As Mr
H. A. J. Hulugallel remarks, they (A. M. especially) 'dominated
public opinion in the island for nearly fifty years'; they wrote
innumerable articles and reprinted them as pamphlets and served
them up again as books; when copy or controversy ran short I am
almoit certain they addressed powerful letters to themselves signed
1 Many of the above facts are derived either from Memorials of the Ferguson
Family (privately printed), which Mr C. B. Ferguson kindly sent me, or from
Mr H. A. J. Hulugalle's The Life and Times of D. R. Wijewardene (Assoc. Newspapers
of Ceylon, 196o).
195

'Peppercorn' or 'Moderation' and then penned the stinging rejoinders
which appeared in subsequent numbers; they issued manifestoes to
heads of State in several languages; they gave interviews to the Pall
Mall Gazette and invaded the correspondence columns of The Times;
and just as you think every possible outlet is brimful, forth it. all
comes gushing again in the pages of the Tropical Agriculturist
(founded by John in 1881, while his uncle was in Melbourne).
However, these amazing men had some spare time. They utilised
it in launching the Ceylon Directory. What a work! Year by year since
1863, with various almanacs before that, it has charted the political,
social and above all the commercial structure of Ceylon. It lists all
firms and their principal employees, all estates (under their English,
Sinhalese and Tamil names), all official, semi-official, educational and
philanthropic bodies, with descriptions of their activities, and provides a staggering mass of other historical, statistical and economic
data. It even lists all people, at least all those it thinks ought to be
listed, and does so under the unique and delightful headings of `Men's
Addresses' and 'Women's Addresses' respectively. The organisation
Associated Newspapers of Ceylon ('Lake House') which now represents the old Observer interest, has grown and spread, and survived
some very tough times politically, but none of its other fine achievements quite come up to what Ceylon people call for obvious reasons
the 'Red Book'.
So I do not want to seem ungrateful. Yet the two original Fergusons
do pose a very real problem to writers on Ceylon tea. They were so
pervasive that hardly anyone else seems to have thought it worth
while even to try and compete. Consequently, almost everything of
the period which one reads today on the subject is in fact Fergusonderived, even if not actually written by uncle or nephew. Not only
their anecdotage, but their basic facts and judgments on the industry
are quoted again and again and accepted as gospel. It is fortunate that
apart from minor foibles and a tendency to gloss over Ceylon's troubles
in difficult times, they were usually accurate and disinterested.
I can only say that while in the present work I have tried to get
'behind' the Fergusons, I have frequently found no alternative to
them and elsewhere have most likely quoted them when an original
source had seemingly been reached! They are the air the Ceylon tea
historian breathes.
a *
Even though the writings of John Ferguson, in particular, were

196

aimed blatantly towards boosting his adopted country and coaxing
British capital and manpower into it, he and his uncle did not quite
dominate the propaganda scene. This was because the lead had been
quickly taken by one or two outsize personalities among the planters
themselves. Of these the chief was certainly H. K. Rutherford, one of
the proprietors of Mariawatte. The P.A. centenary volume calls this
the 'Rutherford era' in Ceylon tea promotion and that is no exaggeration.
In the library of the Ceylon Association, London, is a folder labelled
Brief History of Ceylon Tea Propaganda from 1879 Onwards. What it
actually contains is pasted-up cuttings of two very long articles which
appeared in the Times of Ceylon in January 1925. From the fact that
the folder was presented to the Association by H. K. Rutherford and
from internal indications, the articles, if not Rutherford's own work,
must have been mainly inspired by him, and they will be our chief
guide through this particular patch of jungle.
The author was writing, as he says, at a time when 'the question of
a revival of the Tea Cess, which lapsed in December 1908, is being
discussed and seems to have the support of both London and Ceylon
interests'; the intention, firmly stated at the start, was to give a salutary
jog to the memories of readers, 'even those intimately connected with
the industry', about the gigantic efforts made in the early years to
push the fortunes of Ceylon's new enterprise.
Though we have already mentioned the Melbourne and Calcutta
Exhibitions, the Times of Ceylon writer claims an even earlier initiative
by the planters who, he says, urged Government to appoint a fully
accredited Ceylon Commissioner to the Sydney, Australia, International Exhibition of 1879. This was turned down, but the planters
themselves sent exhibits of tea to be put on show.
The story from then on is so intricate that the most helpful thing is
probably to start with a potted account of how money was raised for
the earlier campaigns:
I. 1883-86. In view of huge growth in Ceylon production and success
of Calcutta exhibition, Government hands over Rs. 5,000 to Planters'
Association for promotional purposes, especially in connection with
Colonial and Indian Exhibition, South Kensington (see below).
4. 1886. On motion of H. K. Rutherford, the Planters' Association
inaugurates a voluntary TEA SYNDICATE FUND for 'collecting teas' and
distributing them 'in small parcels and lots to grocers and private
individuals in the principal towns of America, Canada, Australia and
197

New Zealand'. Thirty-nine estates initially promise to 'subscribe'
amounts of tea ranging, from 25o lb. (Hattanwella and Logan) up to
5,000 lb. (Dunedin, Mariawatte, Sembawatte and Dewalakande). Two
Ceylon planters to work as Commissioners McCombie Murray (U.S.A.)
and Hugh Mackenzie (Australia).
3. 1887. Rutherford issues a Press appeal for Ceylon representation
at the Glasgow Exhibition of 1888 Rs. 7,000 to be raised by a voluntary
tax of Rs. r on every I ,000 lb. of tea turned out at the factory. Planters'
Association 'recognising the importance and advantages to the tea
industry of the Island by taking more vigorous and systematic steps to
make Ceylon tea known throughout the world', strongly commends a
modified scheme to District Associations and individual planters. The
plan to be dependent on not less than 500 estates enrolling their names this easily achieved. Government contributes Rs. 2,000 towards Glasgow Exhibition. Tea Syndicate Fund merged with new TEA FUND. Levy
continued until 1891, when because of criticism of the benefits being
received by non-contributors, it is reduced to so cents for 1892-4. Total
received over the period Rs. 146,874.
4. 1892. Yet another Rutherford brainwave though he was no
longer in the island to promote it an export levy to meet the cost of
participation in the Chicago World's Fair. Only (fateful step!) this was
to be compulsory and statutory, levied at the Customs. Ordinance No. 15
of 1892 duly passed and the first PROPAGANDA CESS imposed at the rate
of so cents per too lb. of all tea exported as from r January 1893
5. 1894 Further ordinance continues the Cess at a higher rate of
20 cents per roo lb. exported. General meeting of Planters' Association
agrees that the administration of funds from the increased Cess should
be in the hands of a COMMITTEE OF THIRTY 24 appointed by the Planters'
Association and 6 by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce. This Committee constituted by Ordinance No. 4 of 1894 as the official body for
'increasing the consumption of Ceylon tea in foreign lands'. Ceylon Tea
Fund wound up after 'wonderful record of service', as the Planters'
Association centenary volume puts it.
Clearly, before carrying the Saga of the Cess any further, we need
to have a closer look at that 'wonderful record' and see how the Ceylon
Tea Fund went about its pioneering job.
It was an age of exhibitions. The very title 'Commissioner', which
Ceylon tea propagandists abroad still carry, derives from the officials
who were appointed to organise, or to represent their countries at,
the original Great Exhibition of 1851. (Ceylon was there, of course,
with the immortal John Capper in charge of what he called a 'sorry
show' of the island's industries.) We have already seen that even be198

fore the establishment of the Ceylon Tea Fund, the planters displayed
tea at Sydney, Calcutta and Melbourne, and exhibitions continued
to provide one of the chief outlets for propaganda energies for many
years to come. One reason for this apart from the compelling force
of mere fashion was that they represented something clear-cut and
tangible and with at least a chance of getting part of one's money
back. The same reasoning, friendly reader, can be heard now and then
to this day.
Once again we must resort to tabular form to give an idea, however
incomplete, of Ceylon's effort in the exhibition field between 1886
and the end of the century:
1886 United Kingdom. Colonial and Indian Exhibition, South
Kensington, London. Commissioner, J. L. Shand. 167 estates send
samples, described by the judges as 'somewhat resembling a mixture of
China and Indian tea'.
1887 United Kingdom. Liverpool Exhibition. J. L. Shand again (at his
own expense). Ceylon tea on sale in packets and by the cup.
1888 United Kingdom. Glasgow International Exhibition. Still J. L.
Shand. H.M. Queen Victoria visits Ceylon Court and 'graciously accepts'
a cup of Ceylon tea.
Belgium. Brussels Exhibition. Supervised by Sir Graeme H. D.
Elphinstone and others.
Australia. Melbourne Centennial Exhibition. Commissioner, Hugh
Mackenzie.
1889 France. Paris Universal Exhibition. Commissioner, J. L. Shand.
New Zealand. Dunedin, New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition.
Representative, Kenneth S. Begg.
1893 U.S.A. Chicago World's Fair. Commissioner, J. J. Grinlinton.
28,000 spent on Ceylon Court; 459,649 cups of tea and 1,o6 ,623 packets
sold.
1894 (onwards). Russia. Various Nijni-Novgorod Fairs. Commissioner, M. Rogivue.
1896 United Kingdom. Empire of India and Ceylon Exhibition, Earls
Court, London. Managed by a Committee.
1900 France. Paris International Exhibition. Commissioner, J. H.
Renton.
The pattern, it must be confessed, seems a little erratic, but that
is a general point with regard to Ceylon's tea propaganda effort to
which we shall have to return. The work involved, especially in the
199

great International shows, was immense. The usual layout appears
to have been a 'Ceylon Court', displaying all the country's products,
rather on the lines of what is seen today at the Commonwealth
Institute, London, for example. But, often there was a separate Tea
Kiosk as well. We happen to have a charming first-hand description
of one of these, in the form of a report made to the Ceylon Chamber
of Commerce by Sir William Mitchell after he had paid a special visit
to the great Paris Exhibition of 1900.
The Tea Kiosk, he says, was in a separate upstairs building but
adjoining the main court. A band occupied the centre of the Kiosk
(`band' but as Sir William speaks of 'a piano and stringed instruments' one suspects the usual Palm Court Trio). The fragrant and
reviving tea was served by 'eight native servants, looking very smart
in white cloth and jacket, white collar and black tie'. We even hear
the names (or nicknames) of two of them Chang, who inspired some
awe owing to his great height, and Miskin, who got more attention
from the Parisian girls than was good for him.
(This theme of the handsome Ceylonese servants by the way replaced today by girls in saris had previously turned up in a Times
report of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886, where, we are
assured, the 'weary afternoon visitors and dangling couples enjoy
their tea all the more because it is served to them by white-robed
Sinhalese, with their jet-black heads coronetted with a cross-comb'.)
Returning to Sir William, he mentioned that in the main court teas
from a large number of Ceylon estates were displayed, small packets
were given away and larger ones sold, while 'printed matter' showed
where Ceylon tea could be obtained in France and elsewhere on the
Continent. Two model tea factories and other exhibits explained
how Ceylon tea was produced. Other causes for pride: The Ceylon
Court was one of the few sections of the exhibition which had been
ready on the opening day, and the organisers managed to get Ceylon
tea served in no fewer than 6o restaurants in and around the exhibition.
All this well within the estimated cost of zz,000. The result? Well,
France was 'never likely to become a large tea-consuming country like
England because the masses find coffee and light wine cheaper, but
the better classes are taking to tea and the taste for it appears to be
spreading'. The Ceylon Tea Kiosk had undoubtedly introduced
Ceylon tea to thousands who had never tasted it before.
This indeed was the usual theme of all the early exhibition work echoed now triumphantly, as after the Chicago World's Fair, now a
200

little wistfully, as at only the second General Meeting of the Ceylon
Association, London, in 1889; how soon this youthful organization
was faced with the facts of life!:
'During the year (the Executive Committee reported) the Paris
Exhibition Tea Room Committee had closed the work entrusted to it.
Although financially the business was not successful, it is hoped that
some little good was done in making known the merits of Ceylon tea in
France, and that the Agencies since started in that country may be able
by degrees to extend their operations.'
This does not sound as though Paris 1889 had the lan of Paris 1900
there had, in fact, been some rather embittered correspondence
between the P.A. and J. L. Shand who was in charge and was allowed
to have a financial interest in the tea service side. In order to try and
make it pay, he had sub-contracted the job to Messrs Spiers and
Pond and authorised them to serve the public with something a little
stronger than the 'Ceylon temperance beverages' which were supposed to be the chief attraction. Even so, a modest deficit of X288 was
incurred. This was promptly met by London guarantors and repaid
later out of the Ceylon Tea Fund.
Though exhibitions absorbed the limelight, Ceylon Tea Propaganda
took many other initiatives in its first quarter of a century. In fact, at
times it reminds one of Stephen Leacock's gallant knight who
'mounted his horse and galloped off in all directions'. Some of these
efforts were sound and imaginative; others may have been essential
in this introductory period, or worth trying anyway, but might seem
marginal today. Starting at the top, the propaganda pioneers were
keenly aware of the publicity value of Royalty and, of course, in
those days there were a lot more royal personages to choose from. A
bumper tea year for Crowned Heads seems to have been 1891. H.M.
The Emperor William of Germany, The Dowager Empress Frederick
and H.I.H. The Czarewitch of Russia between them (though it is not
clear in what proportions) received 300 lb. of the best Ceylon tea,
packed in 6o boxes of various indigenous woods which were in turn
enclosed in six teak 'outers' and lead-lined cases as well (total cost
Rs. 764.62; total weight ?); the Queen of Italy got z half-chests
together with 1 tamarind wood and 1 calamander wood box (Rs. 172);
while a brace of Grand Dukes Alexander and Nicholas had to be
content with an unspecified 'present' of tea and a mere photograph
albtim (Rs. 126.5o) respectively.
Another busy year in this field was 1898, when His Imperial and
Royal Apostolic Majesty The Emperor of Austria was given a chest
20I

of tea and an album of Ceylon views (in an 8o binding) on the
occasion of his Jubilee. Simultaneously a further gift to the German
Emperor ( too lb. of Kandapolla Orange Pekoe) was arranged, though
the presentation itself did not take place till the following year. This
time the Planters' Association got a first-hand report of the proceedings from Mr James Ryan, dated 6 April 1899. The ground having
been prepared by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Salisbury, Mr Ryan
met the British Ambassador, Sir Francis Lascelles, in Berlin on
4 March to discuss tactics. Sir Francis said that the Emperor had
graciously decided to waive his rigid sabbatarian principles and
receive Mr Ryan the following Sunday morning, but added rather
navely that Mr Ryan should not 'raise the matter of the incidence of
duty on Imperial tea, as that might detract from the grace of the gift'.
All seems to have gone off very happily, with the Emperor contributing the comment:
'I wish I could get my soldiers to drink more tea instead of beer. Only
the North Germans and Friesians, the seafaring peoples, drink tea. It is
very difficult to get the others to do so, they like beer best.'
At the same time Mr Ryan gave the Emperor a specimen of the
5,00o lb. of high-grown Pekoe which the Thirty Committee had
decided to present to the German Army. According to a letter from
the P.A. Secretary sent to the German Consul in Colombo (z8
October 1898), this gift had direct military inspiration:
'The Thirty Committee especially hope that the Military Authorities
in Germany will realise the advantage of Ceylon tea as a beverage for
the troops, and would point to the success that has attended the Campaign in the Sudan, where it is understood that tea was largely drunk,
and materially assisted in connection with the brilliant military operations in that territory.'
Then there was the business of grants of tea actual leaf 'subscribed' by various estates and distributed by the Syndicate to grocers
and private individuals. The rules laid down for this operation were
quite sound in themselves:
The grants were for free distribution only.
They were to be given only in areas where Ceylon tea was not already
an article of commerce and where there was a reasonable chance of
creating a demand.
The free distribution was to be in small amounts to the many.
The recipient must undertake to confine his Ceylon tea business to
pure Ceylon only.
202

Perhaps this kind of pepper-pot promotion reached its climax in
1892, when the list of countries or individual cities where Ceylon tea
sellers got grants in cash or kind reads as follows:
'America, New Zealand, the Argentine Republic, Germany, Tasmania,
Russia, Sweden, Canada, Switzerland, Austria, Bombay, Ahmadabad,
Kurachee [sic] Constantinople, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York,
Vienna, Berlin, California, British Columbia, Bonn, Winterthur, Paris,
etc.'
So it takes a lot of hunting through minutes to discover who applied
for tea and who actually received it. Sometimes it was an individual Mr Alex. Thom got 50 and 500 lb. of leaf for pushing Ceylon tea in
Auckland and district, New Zealand; Mr Hugh Graepel, 25o lb. for
free distribution in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Servia. Sometimes local tea-dealers would be concerned, and there would be keen
rivalry between two firms (such as Messrs J. Hagenbeck and Ch. A.
Bohringer in Germany) for the right to 'represent' the Ceylon tea
growers in that particular territory a right which was usually refused
to both.
More rarely, some still well-known English firm made the approach
Messrs Tetley & Co., for example, got a subsidy of zoo to promote
Ceylon tea at the Geneva International Exhibition (1897). On the
other hand, correspondence with Messrs Peek Bros. & Winch in the
same year reminds us that the job was never for a minute plain sailing.
This firm had approached the Thirty Committee through their
Colombo agent, H. H. Davies, for advertising support in France.
The Committee was disposed to grant 2(3(3 if the amount were
doubled by Peek Bros., but the latter wrote to their agent:
'We cannot entertain the proposition as it does not enter into our
ideas. What we had in mind was to give them (the Committee) the
advantage of our connections. . . . This we consider a valuable contribution against which we would accept the subsidy of the Thirty
Committee. . . .'
No deal. But Peek Bros. got a grant for advertising in Russia the
following year.
Before we go on to the two countries, Russia and the U.S.A., on
which the highest hopes were pinned, a word should be said about
prbpaganda on the home front in Ceylon.
A project with a long history has been the publicising of the
country's principal product by means of a kioskon or near the Colombo
203
Harbour passenger jetty. The first approach seems to have been

made to Government in 189o, a site was granted (though under fairly
stringent conditions) and the noble structure illustrated in Figure 5
was put in hand. By June 1891 a Kiosk Sub-Committee was briefing
Walker Sons & Co. about the equipment, and it was clear that however Kandyan the elevation, the interior was to be vintage Spiers &
Pondl Marble-topped tables, bentwood ladies' chairs, ten dozen
Rockingham teapots that was the form. But there was an excellent
technical proviso 'Urns for boiling water only, not for making tea,
of the best description, to be heated with gas'.
117
NA osiC' ..A.
411111111.--.,
awu.w
AMAMI
al gala' malt
eaun, L
NE111.1
11 1111111 1111
.1 .
Ltesuliorr o /Magi
ere..-,relzen
FIGURE 5. First Tea Kiosk, Colombo Jetty
Came the opening day, r5 December 1891 crowded scene Volunteer Band and well-dressed ladies arrival of H.E. the Governor and Lady Havelock tea and cake handed round mandolin and
guitar recital by Private Gilman and Corporal Murrel no trouble
spared to ensure success. And, indeed, for some nine years the kiosk
did an excellent 'passing trade' in tea and propaganda, particularly
with Australian tourists, at whom it was especially aimed.
But it got the P.A. into deep trouble, of a revealing kind. We meet
here for the first time a facet of propaganda 'politics' on which that
isolated group of pioneers, the Planters' Association of Ceylon, had
to make up their minds with no precedent to guide them. Should a
propaganda body engage in trade? What is trade anyhow? The critics
did not provide philosophical answers to this question; they just said,
Keep off it! So the Tea Fund Committee (it was before Thirty
Committee days) sought, like J. L. Shand in Paris later, to pass the
job on to a commercial organisation, the Ceylon Tea Company. Even
this did not get them out of hot water, however, and one of the Fund's
firmest supporters, Mr William Mackenzie, resigned.
204

In addition to running the kiosk, for which they paid Rs. 600 per
annum rent, the Ceylon Tea Company was used by the P.A. as a
channel for the distribution of its gift tea and for other business
abroad. Many leading planters were among the shareholders and its
pride in being linked with the P.A. was sometimes a trifle overdone:
`The object of the Ceylon Tea Company Ltd. (Under the patronage
of the Planters' Association of Ceylon) is to push and protect pure
Ceylon tea; and while the Ceylon Tea Company (Under the patronage
of the Planters' Association of Ceylon) is not prepared to give material
guarantees, it pledges itself to sell no tea except good pure Ceylon
tea. .
In spite of criticism the kiosk might have carried on indefinitely,
but extensions to the jetty and Customs House planned in the late
189os foreshadowed its doom. At first the P.A. could not believe its
ears when the word got around; it managed to obtain some kind of
denial from the Governor and published in its 1898-9 Annual Report
a majestic and absurd resolution of thanks to His Excellency who 'by
upholding the dignity of the Crown in the matter has shown that in
his regard the obligations of Her Majesty's Representative towards
the subject cannot be expunged by mere caprice . .
The bureaucracy had other ideas! On 4 March 1899 came a nasty
insinuating sort of letter from the Colonial Secretary: Was not the site
granted solely to assist the advertising of Ceylon tea, and had it not
been observed that the sale of confectionery, tobacco and curios was
being carried on? Four days later the P.A. Secretary replies, explaining with bitter, boiling patience that the kiosk's sales of tea have been
supplemented from the start not only with confectionery and tobacco
but with aerated waters, ices, bread and butter, fruit, flowers yes,
and the dealer in curios has been there ever since opening day too.
It was no good, the kiosk had to go, and though there is mention in
August 1899 of a Rs. 15,000 grant for removing it to a new site, it
seems simply to have been pulled down.
We turn now to a wider field!
Russia as a market has always raised the hopes of the tea propagandists, as well as the Colombo exporters. In the 189os Ceylon
thought herself lucky in having an active promoter in the trade there,
but later was not quite so sure. Mr Mountsteven Bremer,2 travelling
in Russia at that time and none the worse for his brush with Mr
Resolution forwarded to the Ceylon Tea Fund, 1891.
Memoirs of a Ceylon Planter's Life (London, Rivingtons, 1930).
205

Horniman, was delighted to find 'my old friend Rogivue', formerly
with Volkart Brothers in Colombo and South India, not only running
a Ceylon tea business but organising a Ceylon Pavilion at NijniNovgorod Fair for the Planters' Association.
The Tea Fund Committee and later the Committee of Thirty spent
a lot of time and a fair amount of money on M. Rogivue. It was in
May 1890 that this Swiss gentleman had approached the Tea Fund
Committee and persuaded them to finance him on an exploratory
visit to Russia. They agreed and happy days of quick decision and
no red tape! he left the following month, travelling via London and
arriving in St Petersburg in June. He intended to stay in Russia a few
weeks, but the original Man Who Came to Dinner remained for
over ten years. From then onwards it was one long saga of M. Rogivue
asking for money, M. Rogivue complaining of neglect, M. Rogivue
having to bribe the Government Analyst to affirm that Ceylon tea
was not poisonous but also of M. Rogivue selling amazing quantities
of tea. Quite apart from three agencies he established in Moscow and
fourteen in the Provinces, he used every gimmick known to promotion then and now, had a Press list ranging from the Astrichanskie
Lestok down to the Vostochnie Obrozreani, and even managed to
smuggle a Ceylon tea kiosk into the French Exhibition in Moscow
in 1892.
One way and another Rogivue sold well over a million pounds of
Ceylon leaf between 1890 and 1896, during which time he received
2,830 from the Planters' Association in cash or tea. However, a
shock came a year later when he suddenly turned himself into a
limited liability company and joined forces with Sir John Muir of
the Indian Tea Association! The Thirty Committee protested, but
M. Rogivue was ready with his come-back:
`t. I am quite at liberty to transfer my business to a company without
asking the permission of the Thirty Committee or anybody else.
`2. My company has not been floated to push the sale of Indian tea
only.
`3. I deny that I have been "crimped" by anybody.'
For a time, Lampard, Crosfield (whose Moscow connections we
have already noted) got the Russia subsidy instead of Rogivue Ltd.
The Swiss end of the latter seems to have come back into the
Ceylon propaganda picture, since we hear of a fracas between it
and J. H. Renton, European Commissioner, over travelling expenses;
and there is a last belated glimpse of M. Rogivue himself alas in
zoo

reduced circumstances receiving a kindly grant of 50o from his
old employers, the Planters' Association, in the year 1912.
And so we reach the arena where all propaganda problems and
experiments were concentrated in their most vivid as well as their
most expensive form: The American market that golden, tantalising
dreamland in which the producing countries, sometimes in turn, more
often simultaneously, have persuaded themselves that there are
gigantic sales to be won, sumptuous profits to be made, if only, . . .
So it is not with the least surprise that we read the decision that
in 1894, for example, at least 8o per cent of the proceeds of the
increased Cess was to be spent on the American continent, leaving 20
per cent for the rest of the world. Ceylon was simply starting something which everyone else has imitated and, as the summary on page
198 has already shown, the Cess itself was first levied ad hoc for an
American purpose, to ensure Ceylon representation at the Chicago
World Fair. The preamble to the all-important Ordinance is quite
specific:
`WHEREAS in order to provide towards the cost of the adequate representation of this Colony at the World's Columbian Exposition [its
official title] at Chicago in 1893, it is expedient to levy a duty on all tea
of the produce of this Island exported therefrom; be it, therefore,
enacted etc.'
The Commissioner appointed was J. J. (afterwards Sir John)
Grinlinton. Like Ferguson before him, he did not believe in selfeffacement, though his publicity took the form of animated letters to
the P.A. describing all the difficulties and his skill in overcoming
them, rather than using the medium of the Press. Eventually he
secured four strategic sites for sales kiosks as well as the splendid
central pavilion. As usual, this was in the `Kandyan' style and one
cannot help being impressed by the efforts to make it solid, durable
and authentic. It was not only designed in Ceylon, but actually
executed there in characteristic indigenous woods. A workshop was
set up in Colombo and we hear of so to 200 highly paid carvers,
carpenters, and artificers daily employed', together with three steam
saws and moulders kept continually sawing timber, and three carts
for removing the sawn wood. The result was that 'little Ceylon', as
Grinlinton liked to call it, got a representation well out of proportion
to its then importance in the international (or even in the teaproducing) scale!
But when the euphoria of Chicago was past, the task of the Ceylon
207

Commissioner in North America (now William Mackenzie) appeared
formidable indeed. His letters and reports were spirited and make
good reading, but the burden of them was that far more money than
the Thirty Committee could provide would be needed to divert
demand towards Ceylon tea. 'How much have you got?' asked the
advertising agencies. `Lto,000.' Sounds of jeering laughter.
So all the Commissioner could do was to conduct a sort of skirmishing battle, doing localised poster campaigns and seizing on any current
event 'the yacht race (Lipton's Shamrock!), the eclipse, the defeat
of Tammany Hall and so on' for a bit of topical publicity. Some
money definitely went in cash to a few of the bigger distributors in
fact, Mackenzie was authorised to offer to pay for one-third of their
advertising if they would boost Ceylon. The Thirty Committee were
a bit secretive about this (less said less trouble, as they rightly
guessed), but the recipients seem to have included Messrs Larkin &
Co., of Toronto (founders of the famous Salada Company) and Sir
Thomas Lipton! If this is correct, it throws a curious light on Alec
Waugh's statement that it was Lipton who more or less pushed the
P.A. into the Chicago World's Fair.
A little earlier, another form of promotion had been tried which,
as in the modest affair of the jetty kiosk, caused trouble because of its
too intimate commercial link. The Ceylon Planters' American Tea
Company was formed in 1889 and given the special privilege of
trading in the States under the Planters' Association patronage. The
Company got itself (and the Thirty Committee) into all sorts of bad
odour before the connection was finally broken, though as in the case
of M. Rogivue this did not prevent a good lot of Ceylon tea being sold.
Reverting to Mr Mackenzie's struggles, there was one direction in
which he certainly carried the day with his employers, though the
long-term effects were more or less negative. This was the Strange
Affair of the Green Tea Bonus. Up till about 1895 Ceylon had manufactured only black tea, very much like what is so widely enjoyed
today; green (or unfermented) tea remained the speciality of China
and Japan. But, in that year Mackenzie pointed out to the Thirty
Committee that America was a Green rather than a Black market; and
indeed at this period she predominantly was.
Accordingly, the manufacture of Green Tea was begun under the
stimulus of a ro-cent (about id.) bonus, paid out of the Cess for
every pound exported. Considerable excitement was generated and
the pages of the planting Press pullulated for a time with letters
recording successes or failures and advocating this or that technique
208

of manufacture. But there was nothing in it really. Exports grew to
nearly 4 million lb. by 1902, jumped to II million the following year,
declined to 7 million in 1904 and went on dwindling,1 whereas black
tea exports to America continued on a happy upward trend. Ceylon
had jumped on a band wagon which was already slowing down.
Finally, it was in America that the great question of co-operation
with India came to the boil. The idea had been mooted (by H. K.
Rutherford of course!) at the astonishingly early date of 1885 in fact
it was the first promotional scheme the Planters' Association ever
considered, apart from Exhibitions. This was three years before the
Indian producers had their first co-operative stand (Brussels 1888)
and eight before they formed their Voluntary Foreign Market Fund.
Nothing came of Rutherford's proposal, however, and the next
small hint we get of possible joint promotion is when Palais Indien
Tea Houses of Paris, hitherto working only for a body known as the
Indian Tea Districts Association, suggested that in future they should
represent Ceylon as well. This was turned down by the Ceylon
Association, London. Then in 1894, apparently on the initiative of
Sir John Muir,a there were talks between the Indian Tea Association
representatives in America and William Mackenzie, as a result of
which he put before the Thirty Committee a scheme for joint action
in promoting 'British Grown' tea in America. This failed to gain the
approval of the Committee, but all the same Mackenzie was given a
fairly free hand to co-operate with the Indian Commissioner, Richard
Blechynden, where this seemed advantageous. The result was a Press
campaign during 1896 when a joint advertisement appeared in 28
newspapers. There was further co-operation during the next two
years. Expenditure on purely Ceylon advertising, pamphleteering and
subsidies during the II years up to 1906, when Mackenzie retired,
amounted to about 1oo,000.
However, it was the World's Fair at St Louis in 19o4,3 at which
both countries were separately represented (Ceylon Commissioner,
Stanley Bois), that really brought Ceylon and India together, at least
temporarily. At the end of it a special committee was set up and
1 Ceylon was still exporting up to 2 million lb. of green tea per year between the
wars, with Russia easily the largest buyer, followed by India and the U.S.A. The
trade did not finally cease until 1936.
3 Sir Percival Griffiths (op. cit.) quotes an interesting letter from the editor of
the Ceylon Observer to Mr P. R. Buchanan (26 January 1894) hinting that if Sir
John were to invite the co-operation of Ceylon this might avoid the danger of the
two countries going on separately 'in a peddling way', instead of combining against
the inferior products of China and Japan.
3 Celebrated as the birthplace of Iced Tea in the U.S.A.!
209

Blechynden was appointed Joint Commissioner for St Louis and
district. His work there lasted about three years, Ceylon's contribution being a modest Lio,000 or so.
Meanwhile (as this parsimonious effort may indicate) all was not
well with the Cess. The century had opened enthusiastically and in
1902, with funds under heavy pressure from the Green Tea Bonus,
everyone agreed that the Cess should be raised from 20 to 3o cents
per Jo lb. The following year a proposal for a further increase to 5o
cents was passed by the Planters' Association to the Ceylon Association, London for their views; an alternative suggestion was that any
extra money needed for the Green Tea Bonus should be a first charge
on the Cess for the following year. There seems to have been a large
majority in favour of a higher Cess, but the Thirty Committee finally
turned it down. The Government then offered to advance Green Tea
Bonus money on the security of the next year's levy.
1904 same exercise! All parties were circularised about an
increase to 5o cents. Result: 15o,000 acres (that was how these things
were calculated) in favour of the Cess remaining unaltered or increased to 40 cents only, and surprise, surprise 30,000 in favour
of abolishing it. An official Ordinance maintained the Cess at 3o cents
indefinitely.
The fact is that quite a number of planters who were not members of
the P.A. were by now objecting vociferously to the levying of an
Export Cess the proceeds of which were being used by the Thirty
Committee for (as the critics saw it) the benefit of P.A. members only.
Moreover, Ceylon (and India too) had got themselves entangled
in a vehement campaign against tea duties but import, not export!
We saw earlier how, after numerous ups and downs through the
centuries, the U.K. import duty on tea had dwindled by 1890 to 4d.
per lb. It remained at that figure till 190o, when it was raised to 6d.
to help pay for the South African War. Immediately, there was a
joint Ceylon/India memorandum to the Chancellor pointing out that
while tea was taxed 'almost to its full value', sugar remained free.
The Chancellor took immediate action. In the next Budget sugar was
taxed, the tea duty remaining unchanged. . . . Matched against the
Treasury, you can't win.
As the industry was to realise during the next few years. In 5903,
they made another vigorous protest and once more due notice was
taken. The tea duty was raised to 8c1P- At this point George Nathanial
1 Budget of 1904. The new duty was calculated in Ceylon to represent izo per
cent on the current auction price of common tea.
210

Curzon, Viceroy of India, flung his weight and majesty into the
battle, with the Governor of Ceylon (Sir West Ridgeway) acting, it
must be confessed, rather as pinnace to that great galleon. Their
protest really does seem to have had some effect at any rate during
1905-6 twopenceworth of duty was remitted. Maybe some of the
credit should go to the Anti-Tea Duty League which was founded in
January of 1906. This body is interesting as being the most comprehensive example up till then of Ceylon/India co-operation in the
tea world. The inaugural meeting was called jointly by the Ceylon
Association and the Indian Tea Association, the President was Sir
West Ridgeway (by then retired from the Governorship) and the
Executive Committee was presided over by the I.T.A. Chairman,
Mr F. A. Roberts.
The full story of the League cannot be told here; all we need say
is that it went about its job with tremendous zest and some humour,
and that by its agitation for a 'free breakfast table' contributed to
Balfour's defeat at the 1906 Election. The League achieved a further
id. reduction in the duty before it ceased operations in 1909.
All this, no doubt, helped to fan the growing feeling, reported by
the Ceylon Association in 1905, that the Cess should be abolished or
at any rate reduced. It was finally decided to recommend to the
Thirty Committee that it should be cut to so cents per soo lb.; the
Thirty Committee preferred a reduction to 20 cents. At this point
the Colonial Secretary, Lord Elgin, positively instructed the Ceylon
Government to abolish the Tea Cess Ordinances.
The Planters' Association, persistent as ever, asked the Ceylon
Association, London, to co-operate in trying to get this sweeping
edict reversed, though in the end the Resolution passed in London
struck a plaintive rather than an aggressive note:
`That this meeting, recognising that after the expiry of 5908 the
collection of the Tea Cess must cease, considers that in the interest of
the Tea Enterprise it is highly desirable to obtain the consent of the
Secretary of State for the Colonies to the retention on the Statute Book
of the Tea Cess Ordinances so as to keep alive the machinery for collecting funds in case of emergency. It is recognised that the Cess will not
be reimposed unless the Secretary of State is satisfied that those interested are unanimously in favour of it.'
Lord Elgin's decision was, however, confirmed by Lord Crewe,
who succeeded him in 1908, and the Ordinances were in due course
abolished.
The natural consequence was that Ceylon tea promotion dwindled
211

and, when existing funds had been used up, went into a restless coma
which was to last for nearly thirty years and which left the problem
of co-operation with India still unsolved. Among the Thirty Committee's last gestures was one of those curious blind-alley efforts
which probably arose through the lack of what we would call today
an efficient market research organisation. A certain flurry had been
caused by the formation in 1907 of the China Tea Association which
started a small campaign, but with real 'knocking copy' designed to
persuade the British public that China tea was better for them than
Indian or Ceylon, as being less astringent.
In this they made use of the advice given to his students by Sir
Andrew Clark (one of the more tiresome of eminent Victorians) that
'if you want either for your patients or yourselves, tea which will not
injure and will refresh, get China black tea'. Needless to say John
Ferguson, in far-off Colombo, instantly seized his pen and started
splashing the ink about to some purpose. But the Thirty Committee
took the more tangible step of voting 42,000 for repelling this Chinese
menace and suggesting to the Joint Standing Committee, which by
then had been established in London, that India should do the same.
The Indian Tea Association seems to have realised that the panic was
premature; anyway they refused to vote any funds and apart from a
few hundred pounds spent by Ceylon no further action was taken.
In fact, all turned out for the best and it is recorded in the Minutes of
of the Ceylon Association Tea and Produce Committee that imports
of China tea in the first four months of 1909 were half those of 1908
and a third of those for 1907.
The final scene in the Thirty Committee's active life was the
generous disposal of its remaining funds in providing free tea to the
troops passing through Colombo in World War I and contributing
to various war charities.
Looking back over the whole story, it can fairly be said that the
propaganda efforts of the Ceylon planters in the 35 years up to 194
showed the same thrusting energy and the same grit as carried them
through the coffee crisis. Indeed, as Sir Percival Griffiths reveals,' the
unity of purpose between them and the Colombo merchants in
raising funds and getting first into the field was a constant cause of
envious comment amongst the propagandists of India. When occasionally they did go astray it was only through an understandable lack
of professional expertise in a field outside their own.
op. cit.
212
Second Interlude
THE CHASM: 1914-18

ODERN historians, especially those who regard themselves as
enemies of cant, are fond of 'debunking' the idea that the
years preceding World War I were peaceful and secure. They
have much contrary evidence to bring, though the argument is a little
arid. The useful exercise, surely, is to compare the pre-1914 world
not with some abstract state of security and peace (never yet reached
by mankind), but with what emerged in 1918. Here the 1914-18
history of Ceylon and its tea industry has something to contribute,
even though it was not superficially a time of significant change. As
the Planters' Association centenary volume puts it:
'It might naturally be concluded that the normal development of the

Colony would have been fundamentally affected during those anxious
years. That this is not so can be seen from the records of the Association
which faithfully mirror, not only its own affairs, but conditions throughout the island.'
However, it is a characteristic of mirrors not to see below the
surface.
The onset of war, such as it was, came very gently. Ceylon did not
suffer physically from enemy action, there was no immediate restraint
on trade and not even any abrupt depletion of manpower. A selected
Company of the Ceylon Planters' Rifle Corps was sent overseas at
once, but letters in the local Press, particularly the Planters' Gazette,
reveal much tension between the desire of the young men to 'join
up' and the need to keep the estates in more or less working order.
Gradually the numbers serving rose; in the end there were over Boo
Ceylon planters in the commissioned ranks alone. And as the dreadful
years went on there were more and more tributes then unforgettable,
now too often forgotten to the deeds and sacrifices of those who
died.
Internally, the most exciting event had nothing to do with the war,
though of course there were the usual rumours that 'German spies
were at the bottom of it'. This was the outbreak of violence in 1915
which began as a dispute between Buddhists and Muslims over a
religious procession and ended in murderous riots and severe repres213

sion, leaving much bitterness behind it. But once again the trouble
largely by-passed the estates, whose Tamil workers stayed notably
uninfected by the general ferment.
No, it was an invisible time-bomb with a long-term fuse which was
planted under the industry between 1914 and 1918. This was, the
discovery that it could and the notion that in certain circumstances
it should be brought under Government control on a national and
even an international scale.
In an earlier chapter I described the old coffee industry as the
`ne plus ultra of private enterprise'. The same ethos lived on into the
days of tea. In fact, despite the growth of official interference into a
hundred details of their everyday life (Medical Ordinances, Labour
Laws and the like), the tea growers remained completely free to
produce just as much tea as suited them, to send it where and in what
quantities they pleased, and to sell it for whatever prices it would
fetch. This continued broadly to be the case well into World War I.
It was not until March 1917 that the then Food Controller (Lord
Devonport) 'desired to see' representatives of the Ceylon Association
in London. The matter on the agenda was Government Control of
Tea and the result was the setting up of two Committees:
1. An Advisory Committee of Ceylon and Indian producers, together
with Brokers and Distributors, under the Chairmanship of the Ceylon
representative, Sir Edward Rosling.
a. A Control Committee excluding producers.
The job of the latter was to buy 40 per cent of all teas arriving in
the U.K. at a price of is. per lb., for distribution by the Controller
at a retail price of as. ad. per lb. (soon raised to 25. 4d.). Within a few
months this rudimentary control scheme was extended. All tea was
now divided into four grades, to be sold at various retail prices up to
3s., trade purchasers being 'rationed' on the basis of their duty payments in the previous year. By the end of 1917, with the bit between
its teeth, the Ministry of Food was planning to buy the entire Ceylon
and Indian crops on an f.o.b. basis, imports from Java and China
having been stopped already. This plan led to fierce and protracted
wrangling about terms. The Ministry stood out for 'Cost of Production plus 12 per cent'; the producers argued that to assess the cost of
growing each and every invoice would be an impossible task, and any
way they would be getting a mere 3-4 cents per lb. as profit margin.
Eventually a formula related to pre-war auction prices, with various
adjustments, was thrashed out.
214
THE CHASM: 1914-18

Meanwhile there had been equal searchings of heart in Ceylon
about the restrictions placed on the quantity of tea allowed to be
shipped to the U.K., and particularly the way in which permits were
allocated to shippers and not to individual estates. What happened
when a Colombo agent refused to forward the permitted quantity
(66 per cent in 1917) for a proprietary planter who had not himself
been a regular shipper and therefore held no permit? Answer a
considerable row, and no doubt some kind of compromise to follow.
Dim controversies! Who cares today! Yet the Planters' Association
was closer to the mark in its 1917-18 Year Book than in its subsequent
centenary volume. After outlining the negotiations with the Ministry
it went on:
The above remarks give the very barest particulars of the entire
revolution which has been caused in the Tea Trade generally, and much
might be said with regard to the details which have been anxiously
considered and dealt with throughout the negotiations. Suffice it to
say that Producers, Dealers, Brokers and Distributors have loyally
assisted the Government on patriotic grounds in bringing about this
revolution, although it involves in many cases the entire wreckage of
their business, the possibility of restoring which after the War appears
problematical.'
Well, their business was restored after the war, but the lessons of
control had been learnt. What had been done once could be done
again. And whereas our story of Ceylon tea up to 1914 has been rich
in examples of planters exerting pressure on Governments, from 1918
onwards we shall see this process going quietly but decisively into
reverse.
215
Chapter 13
HOW THE SLUMP WAS MET

'When tempers get heated and things are fogged, adjourn for tea.
It is a priceless prescription.'
LORD cuRzoN, when British Foreign Secretary, 5922
times during the writing of this book I have played with the
idea of including a sort of Disaster Almanack, recording all the
occasions on which the Ceylon planting industry has been
declared to be on (or over) the edge of ruin. With only a little extra
research one could probably provide the appropriate Gloomy
Thought for every year from the 1847 bank smash onwards. But the
plan has a certain monotony and readers will be spared it.
Bad moments there have certainly been. The present chapter starts
with a minor one, then works up to the third of the major crises with
which the planters have been faced so far the Slump of 193o-3.
Between whiles, cheerfulness may from time to time break in.
The immediate result of the ending of controls after World War I
was a rush of tea to the world's markets, and this was nowhere more
felt than in Mincing Lane, ever the barometer of the trade. Ceylon
managed to export 208 million lb. of tea in 1919; of this, 140 million
lb. came to London a record not to be exceeded for the next seven
years.' At the start, auction prices had ruled high, but with a glut of
òld' Government tea and congestion at the docks and rail depots,
they slumped to a mere 'lid. per lb. average. Though 1920 saw some
recovery (average is. 2d.), excessive stocks were still the problem, and
by the end of the year they amounted to 227 million lb. against a
normal 90 million. This still included a lot of 'very poor stuff picked
and manufactured just after the time of control when the Government
bought at a fixed price almost without regard to quality' a drag on
the market if ever there was one!
It was not until 1922-3 that the picture began to turn back towards
normal. By January 1923 the Planters' Association in far-away Matale
was rejoicing that in contrast to 'two years ago', when their teas were
T
' A careful analysis of these movements, by Sir Robert Graham, appears in the
International Tea Committee's publication Tea (2nd ed. 1945). He lays particular
stress on the loss of the Russian market as a result of the 5957 Revolution.
216

fetching round about 30-35 cents, Rs. 1-2o was now the average and
records were being beaten again and again. The reason? 'Reduced
crops and high standard of manufacture since the 1920 slump a
proof that it had been realised that quality pays.' Expert opinion
confirms that there was an improvement in quality from 1921 onwards, though this has been attributed to prolonged drought as much
as to 'the more careful plucking and methods of manufacture which
were resorted to'.1
An interesting question arises here. This was the third time that
some degree of voluntary restriction had been tried, and of course
there was a famous fourth to come. The first occasion was during the
phase of over-production in about 1901, so strangely blamed on Mr
Joseph Fraser. Early in that year the Planters' Association attempted,
in conjunction with India, 'to form a combination with a view to
reduce [sic] the enormous amount of tea which was then oversupplying the markets of the world'. There was adequate support in
India, but the Ceylon planters held back. Nevertheless, partly due
to finer plucking and partly owing to 'climatic influences', the amount
of tea sent to the U.K. in 1901 did decline by 8i million lb., more than
off-setting an increase of 5 million to other countries. The second
attempt was in 1917, when in order to relieve shipping congestion a
voluntary cut of 25 per cent was discussed between the two major
producing countries. This time it was India which shied off how
often in such bargaining between the two neighbours 'When A is
willing B is notl'.' Some companies actually began to enforce the
reduction, but in the end the tonnage crisis eased and the Food
Controller bought almost everything available.
To sum up, whereas in 3901 and 1920 restriction does seem to have
had some effect, in 1917 and (as we shall see) in the early 193os,
market forces ended the crisis before the policy could be fully put to
the test.
So the 1919-20 malaise passed, but it left Ceylon with a reminder
that she could never make herself secure against disaster merely by
producing a lot of tea and hawking it around. Corporate precautions
were needed, and this being the new world, Government help had
to be invoked. There were two possible starters a more scientific
" C. E. Elliott and W. J. Whitehead, Tea Production in Ceylon (Colombo, Times of
Ceylon, znd ed. 5930.
' It was, therefore, something of a landmark when in June 5965, a joint IndoCeylon Tea Commission was set up to co-ordinate the activities of both countries
on such matters as tea prices and some aspects of Overseas tea promotion. It
consists of three officials from each country.
217

approach to tea-growing, and a revival of propaganda. They did in
fact run neck-and-neck for a time, interfered with each other not a
little, and nearly caused the whole race to be called off. In the end,
however, the good steed Tea Research won by a short head, and now
is the moment for us to examine its pedigree and performance.
Readers who have come this far know already that the Planters'
Association's primeval committee-men were a self-confident crowd there was nothing they wouldn't tackle for the sake of the 'planting
interest', whether the matterwas one they knew anything about or not.
But their very early concern for scientific research does them special
credit. At frequent intervals during the late 186os the subject was
aired mainly in the context of soil analysis, then becoming fashionable under the influence of Liebig and Voelcker. The usual suggestion
was that the Planters' Association itself should bring out from England a qualified chemist who would personally examine the soil of the
various districts, and advise the planters on their manuring policy.
The snag to this was cost, but finally a sub-committee was formed to
go into the whole problem. The main Committee tried to get James
Taylor on to it; as usual he pleaded 'Too busy', but sent them one of
his thoughtful and luminous letters instead. After pointing out that
àll the chemist's recommendations would have to be referred to
practical planters to test and be judge of', he adds:
'Might not our Chemist stop in England, and analyse our soils there?
He might probably cost less there, and be a more able man than we
could get out here; and the sending home samples of soils, etc. would
perhaps be as cheap as his getting out chemicals and chemical apparatus.'
The Planters' Association followed this advice, and in November
1870 asked members to forward soil samples for analysis. Most of
them simply sent along chunks of earth, together with a record of
manuring, etc. But Taylor, in whom the researcher's temperament
seems to have been inborn, tackled the job with a home-grown
scientific method, as the start of his covering letter shows:
'In filling the boxes of soil, I dug a hole, about the same width of the
box, filling the box by stages of an inch or two, with earth from corresponding depths in the hole. Thus if a side of the box is taken out, a
section of the soil as it is in the field will be seen nearly correct to the
depth of fully a foot. The surface soil is at the end of the boxes marked
TOP. I may mention that the bulk of the small feeding roots of the coffee
are within generally two or three inches of the surface of the ground.'
218

His memorandum continues in the same meticulous vein.
All the samples were in due course sent to London. The analyses
of the soil were carried out by Voelcker (owing to the illness of Baron
Liebig) and were published in the Planters' Association proceedings
for 1872.
During the succeeding years, the scientific preoccupations of the
planters were entirely with their terrible enemy Hemileia vastatrix.
The good little tea bush seemed to have no problems none of any
urgency, anyway. However in 1898, reverting to their former hobby,
soil analysis, the Planters' Association invited Mr M. Kelway Bamber
to study this subject and other chemical aspects of tea production.
This may have led to a general stirring of interest, because in September 1899 Nuwara Eliya Planters' Association passed a resolution
urging that 'in view of the present state of the industry' (Gloomy
Thought for 1899) the Government should appoint an agricultural
department, with the necessary scientists, as soon as possible. Another
association, Dickoya, became involved in some investigations by Mr
J. B. Carruthers into the menace of 'Grey Blight'. These involved the
erection at various elevations of 'tabernacles' consisting of coffinshaped enclosures of jute hessian 8 ft high, 9 ft wide and 45 ft long,
the object being to see whether the bushes within would be protected
from travelling spores. Were they? The answer remains hidden in a
coffin-shaped tabernacle so far as the present writer is concerned.
Bamber's own long and useful career continued until he unfortunately died as the result of a motor accident in 1924; his monument is
his Text-Book on the Chemistry & Agriculture of Tea.' Throughout
these years, any specific problem from the estates was referred to
Peradeniya. Here, on the old Gannoruwa site, about 21 acres was
assigned to tea experiments, including some long-term manuring
trials and tests of cover crops. Bamber and J. A. Holmes published
reports on these from time to time, but as Mr W. H. Ukers remarked
on paying a visit in the early 192os, comparatively little was being
done for Ceylon's major product. On 9 November 1923 a proposal
was laid before the General Committee of the Planters' Association
by Mr R. G. Coombe that a research station wholly dedicated to tea
should be set up. The idea was well received and a small party
consisting of Messrs F. A. Stockdale, M. L. Wilkins and J. Horsfall
was sent off to see how things were conducted in India. This latterday version of the Morice Mission came back at least with some
interesting dicta. Writes one delegate:
1 Calcutta,
Law Publishing Press, 1893.

219

'It was driven into me with tremendous force that had Assam our
labour and we had their soils and available land, we could either of us
swamp the market. It follows that should mere quantity be needed we
shall be a poor second, as they have their soils and will "get it off"
somehow. But fine teas will always be required.'
Another reports a poignant scrap of dialogue the manager of an
Assam estate speaks first:
`But you can't cultivate on your steep lands?'
`Yes we do, even to the extent of putting manure into alavangu
[crowbar] holes if a fork cannot be got in.'
`Then of course the whole of the land is terraced?'
`No, there is very little terracing in Ceylon.'
'Then you have lost all your topsoil?'
'Long ago.11
Meanwhile a referendum was taken in Ceylon which showed that
97 per cent of the industry backed the proposal. Once again, the
problem was how to raise the money, and a Research Cess appeared
the obvious solution. Correspondence between the Planters' Association and the Ceylon Association in London reveals that since the
agitation for a revival of the Propaganda Cess was going on simultaneously, there was some danger of them not getting either, and
opinion hardened that, of the two, research must come first. And so
it was.
In October 1925 the necessary Ordinances were passed to establish
a TEA RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF CEYLON and to finance it by a
Cess of 10 cents per 'co lb. of tea exported; this came into force in
November of the same year.
By March 1926 Mr T. Petch, a leading botanist and mycologist,
had moved over from Peradeniya to become Director, and temporary
quarters had been found at Nuwara Eliya. No vast space was needed there were only three or four scientists as yet, and the first annual
report recorded the subordinate staff as 'a motor driver, a clerk, a
peon, and a coolie'. The great objective was always to acquire a tea
estate as a working headquarters. This was very far-sighted on the
part of the Tea Research Institute people, as other research stations,
set up in vacuo, as it were, have felt the lack of this day-to-day contact
with the practical job and of an adequate open-air 'lab' for full-scale
1 Ceylon Delegation to the Tea Districts of North India (Colombo, Department of
Agriculture, 1925). The fact that in spite of this early loss of topsoil so much good
tilth has since been created and conserved does the Ceylon tea planters great
credit.
220

experiments. However, it was not until December 1928 that the right
place was found in the St Coombs Estate in Dimbula (424 acres, of
which 291 were in cultivation). A loan of a million rupees was negotiated with the Government to pay for the estate (Rs. 600,000) and for
the erection of laboratories and staff bungalows.
No one except a specialist can fully measure the services which the
`T.R.I.' (as it is universally known) has rendered to the industry; one
hopes that some day this whole case-history of science working hand
in glove with the practical planter will be put on record. From the
outset the Institute attracted first-class research men. To name a
handful, in addition to Petch, there were Dr C. H. Gadd, mycologist
1926-49; Dr Tom Eden, Agricultural Chemist from 1927 until 1949
when he left to inaugurate the Tea Research Institute in East Africa;
Dr F. R. Tubbs, Plant Physiologist 1930-48, now head of the famous
East Mailing Research Station and Chairman of T.R.I.'s Scientific
Advisory Committee in the U.K.; Dr R. V. Norris, Director 1930-50,
and Mr J. Lamb, Director 1950-5. Three recent Directors who
have done much to enlarge the scope of T.R.I's usefulness have
been Dr D. L. Gunn (1959-63), Dr A. W. R. Joachim (1963-5) first
Ceylonese Director of the Institute, and Dr E. M. Chenery (1965- ).
In addition to engaging specialists from all over the world (there
have been Americans, Australians and Dutchmen in the laboratories
in recent years), it has been T.R.I.'s policy to recruit or in some cases
to train as many Ceylonese scientific staff as possible. Today they
have virtually taken over. Two names which should be mentioned in
this context are Mr C. A. Loos, who succeeded Dr Gadd as Pathologist, and Mr E. L. Keegel, who specialised in tea manufacture
problems over a long period from 1932 till 1964.
The Institute is managed by a Board of Control on which most of
the producers' and traders' organisations mentioned elsewhere in this
book are represented; the chairman has always been a planter, and
though Government officials also sit on the Board, it tries to remain
a vigorously independent body.
T.R.I.'s scientists fight on many fronts, but with two clear objectives the production of better tea from more prolific bushes, and the
protection of the latter against pests and diseases. In the first field,
its outstanding service has been its leadership in what might be called
Ceylon's 'Clonal revolution'. The drawbacks of propagation by seed
in areas where it is not possible to insulate seed-bearers from crossfertilisation, and hence a flock of unsatisfactory hybrids, have long
been known, and attempts to propagate by means of cuttings from
221

chosen 'mother' bushes (Plate 17a) had been made by the Japanese
in the nineteenth century. The idea was not taken up seriously until
the 193os, however, when propagation was begun in Assam, using
cuttings consisting of a leaf with about an inch of stem attached
(Plate 18). These 'take' remarkably well and of course no matter how
many cuttings are propagated from the descendants of the original
mother bush, the characteristics of the whole family or 'clone' remain
unchanged.
T.R.I. became extremely active in this Vegetative Propagation
('V.P.') immediately after World War II and plots of some of its
earliest successful clones, including the now famous 202o-series
(actually introduced from Assam by Dr Tubbs), go back to 1947.1
But the whole subject is one for infinite trial-and-error, beyond the
scope even of a station like St. Coombs, since the essence of V.P.
planting is to find suitable clones for all the varied climate and soil
conditions in the tea country. So hundreds of estates today have
experimental plots where the planters test out their own, or their
neighbours', or T.R.I.'s cuttings. I have been shown with pride
wind-resistant clones, drought-resistant clones, anti-eelworm clones,
but it is surprising in how many widely different areas planters have
fallen back on the all-round excellence of a St. Coombs 'classic' such
as 2023, 2025 or 2026.
In its defensive role, there was one occasion on which T.R.I. may
have saved Ceylon from a disaster comparable to the coffee collapse
and this deserves an extended mention. On the whole Camellia sinensis
is a sturdy creature. It has its enemies, but stands up to them remarkably well. The main enemies known in Ceylon are:
INSECT PESTS:
Shot-hole Borer. In the warmer districts this invades the bush via its
succulent stems and does the damage which its name expresses. It can
be controlled by Dieldrin spraying, but unfortunately this also kills
the parasite which controls the
Tea Tortrix Moth, another persistent menace, for which a further series
of sprays has had to be evolved.
NEMATODES:
The Meadow Eelworm can represent a serious problem in Up-country
Ceylon. I have seen one division of a large estate where it has become
almost endemic, and a sad, scrawny sight are the affected fields.
Eelworms can be controlled by up-rooting and soil rehabilitation with
' A fascinating account by Mr A. V. Richards of the origins of the 202o-series
appeared in the Institute's Tea Quarterly for December x965.
222

Gautemala grass, but this is a costly process. High cultivation seems
to help.
FUNGUS DISEASES:
Poria attacks the roots of the tea bush, especially where old decayed
stumps have been left in the soil, and `poria patches' are a quickly
recognisable blot on some Ceylon estates. Careful cleaning out and
fumigation is the only remedy.
Blister Blight (Exobasidium vexans) is much more serious and it is this
which gave Ceylon tea its narrowest escape.
Harler tells usl that Blister Blight was known in Assam as long ago
as 1858, but it was not detected in Ceylon until 1946. It is a parasitic
fungus living on the young tea leaf and to that extent it parallels
Hemileia vastatrix. But it does not immediately kill the part of the
plant which it enters death only occurs when the fungus has completed its own life-cycle and reproduced its kind. The result is a
heavy loss of young flush and even the death of the plant.
Few Ceylon estates were immune from Blister Blight after its first
onslaught. Though Gadd and Loos had already worked out the lifecycle, there was much uncertainty about remedial methods it was
thought at first that parasitic control (as for Tortrix) might be the
answer. By 1949 it was 'panic stations'. A symposium to try and sort
out the various aspects of the problem was held at Nuwara Eliya in
November; this led to a report by the Institute and a special Government grant of Rs. 1 so,000 a year for four years. Large-scale experiments were then made with the help of various plant-protection firms,
who worked alongside T.R.I. scientists during months of experiments. Finally a technique was evolved for spraying with copper
oxide or oxychloride suspensions after every plucking round during
the cool and cloudy weather in which the fungus flourishes. This still
goes on, and the Tea Controller's department regularly takes samples
from the various planting districts to make sure that no excessive
copper content gets into the made tea.
The Blister Blight campaign was T.R.I.'s Verdun, and so far
nothing so dramatic has appeared on the horizon or crawled up the
stem. . . . But there is plenty of other work to be done. St Coombs
today is an invigorating sight. As you approach from the Nuwara
Eliya side you are astonished by the sudden appearance of what looks
almost like a town in the midst of the Dimbula tea fields (the only bit
of Surbiton in Ceylon, as one visitor teasingly remarked).
1 op. cit.
223

There is a large staff as well as much valuable scientific equipment
to be housed, and the laboratories themselves have been almost
doubled in size during the past decade. The estate side now comes
entirely under scientific control but it still sends its teas to market
(yield 1965 1,510 lb. per acre, against only Soo lb. when T.R.I. took
over) and they figure regularly in the honours list of auction prices.
The site is graceful, and all along the slopes the superb lawn-smooth
expanses of the now almost historic clonal fields are varied by
experimental plots neatly outlined with bushes of a darker clone. The
planters feel that T.R.I. belongs to them every year more than half
the estates in all Ceylon send along queries or bring specimens, and
the Institute's staff are perpetually on the move among them. Recently
a creative kind of two-way traffic has been established whereby dozens
of planters have agreed to carry out experiments e.g. the elimination
of shade and increasing nitrogen dressings on certain fields.
For many years the Institute has maintained a separate advisory
service for the Low-country and since 1963 this also has had an estate
and laboratory as its headquarters. The land bought was the Kahahengama Division of Palmgarden Group; it was christened St
Joachim as a sort of parallel to St. Coombs and a well-earned compliment to the 'father' of Low-country advisory work, Dr A. W. R.
Joachim.
* * *
And what of the second runner in that two-horse race of 1925?
Someone suggested at the time that if one Cess (Research) could be
established, the other (Propaganda) would soon follow. A shrewd
comment, though that is not exactly what happened a further
stimulus was needed before Ceylon took up again the promotional
task abandoned some twenty years before.
Abandoned, but not quite forgotten. The vigorous fresh start
eventually made under the stresses of the 193os has obscured the
patient nibbling which went on in between. It began with the surpluses of 1919. First came the old idea of co-operation with India,
but that road was difficult because Ceylon had of course officially
abolished the Propaganda Cess, whereas India had not. Nor was
there any common view about the prospects for a voluntary Cess.
Finally, in November 1919 the Planters' Association passed a formal
resolution that 'having regard to the grave position of the industry
and the increased importance of furthering the sale and consumption
of Ceylon tea, the Government be requested to reconsider their
refusal to pay the Cess from the export duty on tea'.
224

This led to some animated correspondence with the Colonial
Secretary. The Estate Agents' Association weighed in with a resolution that 'a compulsory cess would not be welcomed and a voluntary
cess would not be likely to be supported'. This sounded crisp enough
and received the support of the Ceylon Association, London, but it
was not at all the end of the matter. Meetings, resolutions and a
referendum (indecisive) kept the ball rolling well into the year
1924, after which there was a pause in view of the Tea Research
project.'
`Propaganda for propaganda' was still carried on at every opportunity by a few pertinacious folk, notably Messrs H. A. Webb and
E. C. Villiers with the Planters' Association and Mr W. Shakspeare
with the Ceylon Association in London. Then in 1928 came the first
crack in the log jam which was to break up so spectacularly in the next
five years. The Planters' Association decided to join with the Estates
Proprietary Association, the Chamber of Commerce and the Tea
Traders' Association in setting up a sub-Committee briefed to put
forward proposals for tea propaganda by Ceylon. The result was the
1929 `Lampard Plan' (named after one of its devisers, Mr A. S.
Lampard) for a voluntary levy of 8 cents per cultivated acre by all
those prepared to subscribe. The immediate aim was to raise the
modest sum of $1o,000 which would secure Ceylon participation in
a promotional scheme then being run by the Tea Association of
America. The project went through, though survivors from the
Thirty Committee must have mused grimly that this was where they
came in or rather went out. And in fact the same old grumbles
about the benefits likely to be reaped by non-subscribers were duly
heard.
All this took place under the palpable shadow of on-corning depression, the symptoms in the case of tea being intermittently falling
prices and a marked increase in stocks in consuming countries. Producer countries in turn (or to be more exact their trade associations)
were getting together to try and reduce crops on a voluntary basis,
as usual, at first. The Ceylon growers, entering the embraces of 'that
The flag was flown to a modest extent at the Empire Exhibition, Wembley,
1924-5. The Ceylon Government had decided not to take part, but the matter was
reopened at a luncheon given by the Ceylon Association to the Governor, Sir
William Manning, who had been personally approached by the Prince of Wales. A
substantial sum was raised, guaranteed by those present. A feature of the Ceylon
section was intended to be service of teas on the adjoining lawns; bad weather
affected this and the pressure on the two verandahs was so overwhelming that
additional space was applied for, but in vain. The pavilion was reopened in the
second year again by Ceylon Association initiative. Tea service by the cup was
entrusted to Messrs Gunter.
P
225
monster Restriction' with marked reluctance, became convinced

that a much more radical propaganda plan was the only avenue of
escape nothing less in fact than a full-scale campaign in all the main
markets, supported by a cess on every pound of tea leaving Ceylon.
Again there was cross-talk with Government authorities, but this
time the sense of urgency prevailed and on 24 June 1932, the State
Council passed Ordinance No. 19 providing for the establishment of
THE CEYLON TEA PROPAGANDA BOARD.
Constitutionally, the new organisation closely resembled the Tea

Research Institute, that is to say it was a three-sided partnership
between the Government, the Planters' Association and the other
tea-producing and trading interests in Ceylon. The first members were
the Financial Secretary, the Minister of Labour, Industry and Commerce, or their Deputies, and twelve others (either ex-officio or
nominated) representing the Planters' Association, the Ceylon
Estates Proprietary Association, the Low-Country Products Association, the Chamber of Commerce, the Colombo Tea Traders' Association, the Ceylon Merchants' Chamber, the Smallholders and the
Small Traders. At the inaugural meeting on 5 August 1932, Mr G. K.
Stewart was unanimously elected chairman and the first cess was
fixed at 5o cents per ioo lb. of tea exported.
If one starts from 1929, the course of events is so rapid, on the
world as well as on the local plane, that it can hardly be followed
without the help of a time-table:
1929. Lampard Scheme for Voluntary Propaganda Cess adopted in
Ceylon.
1930. Voluntary Crop Restriction attempted by producer associations
of Ceylon, India, Netherlands East Indies.
1932. (June) Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board established.
1933. (February) International Agreement to regulate production
signed by Ceylon, India and N.E.I.
(July) International Tea Committee constituted.
(October) Empire Tea Growers' Campaign (Ceylon and India)
starts work in London.
1934. (October) International Tea Committee urges Ceylon Tea
Propaganda Board, Indian Tea Cess Committee and Amsterdam Tea
Association to get together to raise consumption 'irrespective of sectional
interests'.
1935. (July) International Tea Market Expansion Board set up in
London.
226

It might easily be assumed that this was a period of sterile planning
talk rather than action with the loose ends of one phase becoming
tangled in the beginnings of the next. That this did not happen was
due to the energetic group of people who put C.T.P.B. into orbit, and
particularly its Chief Commissioner. It was in the autumn of 1932
that Mr John Still, Secretary of the Ceylon Association in London,
went to ask the help of the Empire Marketing Board already
associated with India's campaigns in the U.K. in finding a manager
for C.T.P.B.'s overseas propaganda. There he met Mr Gervas
Huxley, and this young official thought the enterprise sounded so
lively and promising that he offered to take it on himself! Sure
enough, he was appointed Chief Commissioner and on 5 February
1933 arrived in Colombo to start work. Seventeen days later he
submitted a policy memorandum which was unanimously approved
by the Board. This was the beginning of services to Ceylon which
have continued, in various forms, to the present day.
Huxley was aware from the start that the International Tea Committee was about to introduce a regulation scheme which, in the
industry's then condition of crisis, would inevitably be linked with a
world promotional drive for all teas, irrespective of origin. His
memorandum therefore paved the way for this, while recognising that
there were definite 'spheres of preference' which propaganda would
have to take into account.
This situation was well symbolised by Huxley's inaugural journey
on behalf of the Board; it was to India and thence to Kenya in order
to sound out those countries about joint working, and on to South
Africa (already an 8o per cent Ceylon market) to lay the foundations
of a uni-national campaign. The first objective was to bear fruit later;
the second was pressed forward with the greatest alacrity and the
Board's first Commissioner for South Africa, Mr Leslie Dow, took
up his duties in October 1933. Meanwhile G. K. Stewart, as Chairman of C.T.P.B., had gone to the Dutch East Indies to seek the cooperation of the producers there and had been most cordially received.
The next move was to ensure a Ceylon 'presence' in three other
vital fields the United Kingdom, North America and Australasia.
Here again the approach was to depend on local trade predispositions.
By July 1933 the Chief Commissioner was in London to meet representatives of the Indian Tea Cess Committee, whose work in Britain
had an 'Empire Tea' theme; his objective was to get this re-orientated
in the direction of 'Empire plus quality'. Agreement was quickly
reached and on 1 October a body known as the Empire Tea Growers'
227

Campaign started operations. There was a committee of six, three
from each country, the Ceylon representatives being Mr (later Sir
Clifford) Figg, Sir Theodore Chambers and Mr Huxley. Mr Roy
Williams was appointed a joint-Commissioner on behalf of Ceylon.
During the same discussions in London it was agreed that so far
as North America was concerned, Ceylon should start publicity in
Canada for Black tea as a whole and that India should widen the scope
of her existing campaign in the same direction. Mr F. E. B. Gourlay
was appointed Commissioner for Canada, and in October travelled
out to Montreal to set up his headquarters. Huxley, who had accompanied him, moved on to the U.S.A. where he found the going more
difficult; the local Indian Tea Cess representatives were heavily
committed to a campaign in which an outline map of India was being
used as a symbol, and this took some time to sort out.
A further appointment made during that hectic summer was that
of Mr R. L. Barnes, formerly of the Australian Trade Publicity
Department, as Commissioner for Australia and New Zealand.
Everyone set to work like beavers. Within six months of their
incorporation the Empire Tea Growers in London had adopted a
symbol (Mr T. Pott), launched themselves into a 6,000 sq.ft exhibit
at the Ideal Homes Exhibition (55,000 people bought tickets for the
Tea Room of the Future alone), and laid plans for a national advertising campaign which was to 'break' in September 1934. At the same
time the city of Hull was chosen for an intensive local campaign,
using every weapon of publicity. In Canada the pattern was much the
same, with both national and local advertising and a formidable effort
at the Canadian National Exhibition, which earned for the Tea
Bureaus the first Gold Medal to be awarded for seven years. South
Africa got cracking with differentiated campaigns aimed at the
English-speaking, Afrikaans and Bantu sections of the population.
Australia presented trade problems which needed careful investigation, and as this was rather held up by a switch of Commissioners
(Barnes going to London to take charge of the major job there and
being replaced by Roy Williams), active promotion started later than
elsewhere.
Finally, a determined effort was made to encourage the drinking
of more and better tea in Ceylon itself, where the standard in neither
respect was altogether worthy of a great producing country the first
1 The Board's local organisations were and are normally known as Bureaux,
though with numerous minor shifts of nomenclature. In the United Kingdom the
title 'Ceylon Tea Centre' is now used.
228

annual report, in fact, makes uncompromising reference to 'rubbishy
or adulterated tea, made in any way but the correct one'. With Mr
Thomas de Mel as Superintendent of the Ceylon Campaign, four
teams, each headed by an Inspector, were organised. Three of them,
equipped with motor caravans of remarkably advanced design for
their date, carried the message to rest-houses, teashops, railway
refreshment booths, fairs and open-air gatherings of every kind.
For short-term visitors to the island there was a resurrection of our
old companion the Jetty Kiosk (ob. 190o). This had been mooted for
years, and finally in 1928 the Colombo Port Authority offered a site
where the sale of tea to tourists could be resumed, with the Chamber
of Commerce in charge. It seems to have been a rather makeshift
affair; Mr R. P. Hudson told the Planters' Association in 1931 that
it was tucked away in a space only ro ft square and asked why they
could not have a tea kiosk 'like the one they had in the olden days'
(ah, that noble Kandyan pavilion!).
Now (i March 1933) the Propaganda Board moved in, bargained
for a better site and commissioned architects to produce an up-to-date
design. It was still not on the original lavish scale, but included a
handsome tea estate panorama and was an immediate hit with tourists.
A year later, on the initiative of Mr G. C. Slater, who had succeeded
Mr G. K. Stewart as Chairman of C.T.P.B., it was joined at the
harbour by a stupendous sky-sign (said to be the biggest then in
existence) proclaiming the message
CEYLON
FOR
GOOD TEA
The largest letters were 15 ft high and the overall length 232 ft.
As it was visible well out to sea at night it had to be dismantled during
World War II and it is rather sad that it was never reinstated.
There was one particular activity in Ceylon during 1933 which
showed the C.T.P.B. starting as it meant to go on. Arising from
Huxley's Empire Marketing Board connections, the Film Unit sponsored by the G.P.O. London was engaged by the Board to make a
documentary film in Ceylon. This was the classic Song of Ceylon.
Basil Wright directed and Lionel Wendt, the well-known Ceylonese
musician and artist (19oo-44), spoke a fascinating commentary mostly
drawn from the Historical Relation of Ceylon, which the castaway
229

British sailor Robert Knox compiled in the seventeenth century.
This was the first of many commissions whereby the best contemporary architects, artists and writers, as well as film directors, were
drawn into the service of tea; some of them had had their first chance
with the Empire Marketing Board, of which (in that respect) the
C.T.P.B. and its off-shoots are descendants. These high standards in
matters of art and presentation have been continued to the present
time and have paid rich dividends.
This has been the barest summary of what the C.T.P.B. undertook
in its earliest phase. But to the general reader, I fear, the oldest Old
Hat is Old Advertising, so we had best step forward to the next great
landmark the establishment of the International Tea Market
Expansion Board in July 1935. It can be imagined that the gestation
of a body intended to draw funds from all the main producing
countries and to dispense them round the world was a delicate exercise. But the International Tea Committee had put forward powerful
arguments and in point of fact the three organisations so far concerned,
the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board, the Indian Tea Cess Committee
and the Amsterdam Tea Association,' were already doing quite a lot
of joint work, though in various groupings.
The 'brief' given to the new Board ('I.T.M.E.B.') by its sponsors
was to expand tea propaganda throughout the world, to co-ordinate
the work of the three constituent bodies and to promote all teas,
irrespective of countries of origin. It took up its task tactfully and in
two bites. At the first stage it assumed control only of activity in
Canada, U.S.A. and Egypt, with no more than co-ordinating powers
over the campaigns being run in the United Kingdom by C.T.P.B.
and the Indian Cess Committee jointly, in South Africa by C.T.P.B.
and in Holland, Belgium and Germany by the Amsterdam Tea
Association alone. But within a year these activities had also passed
into the direct control of I.T.M.E.B., and world tea propaganda now
spoke with a single voice.
Not a really loud voice as a matter of fact, though admirably
modulated. There was never enough money for a good big Madison
Avenue shout. I.T.M.E.B.'s total expenditure in its biggest preWorld War II year, 1938, was about 415,000, and we have seen how
thinly that had to be spread. The sponsors of the Ceylon Board had
foreseen (like their predecessors half a century before, and in almost
the same words) that their 'main field of operation' would have to be
1 The Netherlands sponsorship was taken over by the Vereeniging voor de
Theecultur in Nederlandsch-Indie in 1937.
230

North America, and by the time the U.S.A. campaign had got into its
stride it was absorbing up to 25 per cent of I.T.M.E.B.'s revenue. A
marked feature there was the division of the work into two distinct
seasonal drives for Hot and for Iced Tea, the latter being treated
almost as a separate beverage and gaining an increasingly firm foothold in America's summer menus. As a result some improvement in
imports was seen, but they remained obstinately below the too
million lb. mark and, as in William Mackenzie's day, the puzzle of
how to realise the `tea potential' of the U.S.A. was unsolved for the
time being.
It will be seen that the creation of the International Tea Market
Expansion Board was one prong of the International Tea Committee's
double attack on the slump in tea prices. The other, of course, was
the regulation of exports. The scheme for this had been worked out
at a series of meetings in London between October 1932 and February
1933, and though the International Tea Committee did not come
formally into being until the July following,' the agreement reached
in February made it possible for action to begin in the countries of
origin. In Ceylon the necessary ordinance (No. it of 1933) came into
force on 26 May of that year as the Tea (Control of Export) Ordinance.
Under the scheme the 'regulating countries' (initially Ceylon,
India and the Netherlands East Indies) agreed that the first operative
year should run from i April 1933 to 31 March 1934, during which
time exports should be restricted to 85 per cent of the standard export
figure. The latter was based on the maximum export from each
country during any of the years 1929, 1930 and 1931, and under this
formula Ceylon's standard export figures was 251,522,617 lb. As it
turned out Ceylon got nowhere near 85 per cent of this, her total for
the 1933-4 year being 197 million lb.
For the second year of operation the quota for each country was
reduced to 821 per cent. But by mid-1934 the tea market had already
shown a marked revival after its 1931 'low' and while the Regulation
scheme (which included a severe control of additional plantings)
certainly had a stabilising effect, it seemed that tea was broadly
following a world-wide pattern of recovery at that time.
The effects of the slump had been sharp in Ceylon, especially at
the human level. It has to be remembered that rubber was even more
1 The original Ceylon representatives on the Committee were Messrs Clifford
H. Figg, E. B. Alexander, W. Shakspeare and Andrew Young.
23 1

drastically affected than tea, which meant that the impact of salary
cuts and reductions in staff were felt throughout the planting districts.
In 193o the 'One Day's Pay Fund' idea was revived to meet particular
cases of distress, and this was continued until the recovery of 1934.
Organisationally, a marked result was a trend to larger groupings of
estates, and hence an economy in the number of senior supervisory
staff required.
The original International Tea Agreement was to run for five years,
but a fresh agreement was signed in 1936 to cover the period 1938-43.
This was hardly under way, however, when the threat of war once
more diverted the tea industry, together with the I.T.C. and
I.T.M.E.B., from its normal course.
232
Chapter 14
UNDER PRESSURE IN A
CHANGING WORLD
'Who can view this perfect scenery without feeling that it would be
conferring a blessing on humanity to be the means of removing
some 20,000 of the panting, half-famished creatures from the burning sandy plains of Southern India to such comparative paradise;
benefiting not only them, the colony, the individual by means of
whose capital they would be brought here, but also our own native
Singhalese people inhabiting the margin of this wilderness. Many
totally unable to cultivate a grain of paddy, or to procure a morsel
of salt, would find themselves attracted to a new centre within this
at present trackless wilderness which (although I have often been
jeered at for saying it) is destined ere long to become the garden of
Ceylon, such a garden as has not entered in to the minds of us
pioneers to conceive a garden of European as well as tropical
productions, peopled with European as well as with Asiatic
faces. . . .'
THOMAS SKINNER (Letter to the Governor of Ceylon,
from Abagamuwa, a a August 1840)
from a few Japanese air-raids which did only a small
damage, Ceylon was scarcely more affected physically by
World War II than by its predecessor. The vital difference was
that instead of being left in abeyance, so to speak, on the outside edge
of the conflict, she found herself poised at the very centre of it, a
half-way house between the two great Eastern and Western theatres.
This, undoubtedly, helped to sharpen the idea of nationhood, and the
realisation that from now onwards Ceylon was going to be one of the
world's significant cross-roads.
Conversely, thousands of young people from the outside world,
especially of course from the West and from Australasia, got a glimpse
of Ceylon which they would never have had in peace-time. Ceylon
was their cross-roads too. Apart from the vast military headquarters
and the numerous defensive posts, it was a popular place for leave and
convalescence, and in many lands one meets men and women who still
have kindly memories of the time they were 'asked up to a tea estate'
and enjoyed the cheerful hospitality of the planters.
So far as the industry was concerned, the lessons learnt by GovernPART
P
233

ments in World War I were smartly whipped out, polished up and
put to good use. Control of shipping and direction of exports came
early, but the decisive moment was when the Japanese, by overrunning the Netherlands East Indies in 1942, deprived the free world
of a fifth of its tea supplies. The British Government, which had 0ready entered into long-term contracts with the growers of Ceylon,
India and East Africa, now became sole purchasers for all the Allied
countries. Restriction was forgotten and by 1944 Ceylon production
reached a peak figure of 298 million lb. compared with only 237
million in 1939. The shortage of tea caused by the loss of the Java
and Sumatra estates continued long after VE and VT Days how
many people remember now that, in Britain, the tea ration was
actually reduced from 2/ oz. to 2 oz. per week in the year 1947, and
that rationing was not abolished there until 1952?
Naturally, the active promotion and advertising of tea went into
cold storage along with restriction, but the International Tea Market
Expansion Board showed its usual resilience by organising tea services
for the Armed Forces and Civilian workers on an almost world-wide
scale. There is no place here for the truly remarkable story of the Tee
Cars; they were not, of course, a specifically Ceylon project, though it
may be remarked that in the island itself the Propaganda Board built
up a fleet of eleven vehicles for the beneficent task of serving tea to
the Forces all over Ceylon.
When the industry did finally emerge from the fog of controls and
regulations which had swirled around it for so long, it was into the
new Ceylon where Independence had been so fast maturing, and on
4 February 1948 the Island became a self-governing member of the
Commonwealth.
And here I think we need to give our minds to something mentioned in my first chapter and present in the background ever since
the relationship between the planting industry and the Ceylonese
people.
I suppose that the average Westerner, if he or she were to consider
the matter at all, would assume that every time a cup of tea from
Ceylon is drunk a favour is being conferred on the people of that
island; it would be quite a shock to learn how much criticism not
merely from the Ceylonese (whether ultra-nationalist or otherwise)
but also from others the enterprise has provoked at various times
throughout its history.
The main points of attack can be broken down into two groups those inherent in any plantation industry organised by foreign capital
234
UNDER PRESSURE IN A CHANGING WORLD

in an under-developed country; and those peculiar to or intensified in
Ceylon.
Typical of the former is the alleged distorting of the economy by
excessive reliance on capricious overseas markets, with a corresponding neglect of local agriculture; the withdrawal of capital from Ceylon
and the failure to build up investment there; the initial exclusion, not
necessarily deliberate, of the Ceylonese from what developed into
their country's major industry, and hence a feeling of not being
masters in their own house. In the second group may be placed the
effect of the Ceylon planters' expansionism on their peasant neighbours; and the problems arising from their decision to operate the
estates with imported labour from South India.
It is impossible to deal at length with the first group of criticisms,
since they cover, as I have said, a vast international phenomenon.
But so far as the export of capital is concerned, it is worth mentioning
that it was attacked long ago by, of all people, John Ferguson, when
he looked back from the early twentieth century to the beginnings
of his beloved planting industry:
`Ceylon in the best coffee days was a sort of incubator to which capitalists sent their eggs to be hatched and whence some of them received
from time to time an abundant brood, leaving but the shells for our local
portion. Had the profits from the abundant coffee crops of those past
days been located here and invested in the country and its soil, a fund of
local wealth might have existed when the lean days came and manufacture
might have been flourishing."The inner mechanism of an agency house such as J. M. Robertson
& Co., as revealed by the Baring archives, makes one realise how this
happened and how difficult it would have been to prevent it, in a
laissez-faire world. The Colombo trade (like the estates themselves)
was a mosaic of small and shifting partnerships. It seemed the natural,
the inevitable thing, for a man to spend say twenty or thirty years
building up a `competence' and then to retreat, often with impaired
health, to a less taxing environment at home. The only way he could
do this was to take out his share of the partnership capital and hope
that there would either still be enough left (as usually happened with
Robertsons) for the firm to remain viable or that some new partner
could be found with money behind him. There were exceptions, and
Ceylon owes important enterprises to them, but that was the pattern,
a thoroughly nineteenth century one in all respects.
The second group of criticisms concerns us more intimately. The
1 Ceylon in 1903 (Colombo, Ferguson, 1903).
235

belief in planting as Progress, almost religious in its intensity, among
the early pioneers, has already been commented on; it had perhaps its
most eloquent expression in Thomas Skinner's letter to the Governor
of Ceylon quoted at the head of this chapter. It was repeated many
years later by the forthright Sir Hugh Clifford (Governor 1925-7).
'The Sinhalese villagers of the uplands of Ceylon,' he said in one of
his speeches, 'did not lose anything by the conversion of vast areas of
untrodden forest into thriving coffee estates. . . . A process of eviction
was applied only to the wild beasts of the forest, whose departure
from the vicinity of the villages can hardly have been regarded by a
practical people as an unmixed evil.' This brought a bitter retort later
on from the anonymous author of that remarkable work, The Revolt
in the Temple? And though the statistics of landlessness and poverty
which he gives are not in fact drawn from the Central Highlands at
all, but from Kegalla, Kalutara and Chilaw, the Report of the Kandyan
Peasant Commissionz follows the same line, and it is echoed even in
Bryce Ryan's sympathetic study of a Dimbula tea estate:
'The invasion of the plantations had placed a sharp limit on village
expansion, and by removing the jungle has in most Wet Zone areas
made chena3 supplementation rare indeed. In one highland village
closely hemmed in by plantations, about 40 per cent of the peasants
operated no paddy land in the principal monsoon period of the year
studied. They were mostly unemployed, seeking other work or idling
until the next sowing season for paddy.'4
The clue to all this lies in the immense growth of Ceylon's population, especially in the twenty years that have passed since the
dramatic defeat of malaria. When the coffee planters first invaded
the Up-country the peasantry were, except in a few areas (mainly
round Kandy), quite thin on the ground. Even by 186o, by which
time there had been a considerable build-up from other regions, the
population of the Central Province was no more than a quarter of a
million, exclusive of the imported South Indian labour. The Province
was then about twice its present size over 5,000 square miles against
the 2,290 to which it was reduced by the hiving off of Uva (1886) and
other adjustments; in other words, there was an indigenous population of less than 5o people per square mile. By 1881 the census
Colombo, Sinha Publications, /956.
Colombo,Government of Ceylon, 1951.
Chena the system of cultivation by the temporary use of forest land which is
afterwards allowed to grow up into secondary jungle.
4 Bryce Ryan, The Agricultural Systems of Ceylon (Cornell University Press,
1953).
2
3
236

showed an increase to a total of 475,669, of whom about ioo,000 were
Indian Tamils; the remaining 375,000 could be regarded as
indigenous. What a change in 1963, when the total population of the
Province had reached 1,708,958, and the overall density 793 persons
per square mile!
Thus, it was some time before any acute problem of landlessness
arose in the Central Highlands. The rapid spread of planting meant a
flow of new employment for the villagers' natural skills, and successive
generations must have seen the estates grow and coalesce and finally
solidify into a compact mass without any strong awareness of pressure
on their own economy. We have evidence, on the other hand, that
they showed a great emotional dislike of the wholesale destruction of
the forests a feeling that must be shared by most of us on ecological
and not just aesthetic grounds.
Lower down, the effects were more immediate. In districts such as
the Kelani Valley and Kalutara there was much reckless disposal of
land which was only technically waste i.e. the title to it was in
abeyance or dispute. Later this was supplemented (particularly in the
rubber boom era) by numerous purchases from individual peasants,
and while it was of course a voluntary process, the lure of 'cash down'
was irresistible to villagers for whom a money economy was itself
novel. The process was accompanied by a good deal of sharp practice
by hangers-on; it went most smoothly and justly when the bargains
were struck (as elderly planters have often described to me) on a manto-man basis in the village itself, with no dubious intermediaries to
diddle the seller out of his money later on. There is no doubt that all
the way through too much old chena and paddy land disappeared in
the process, and that this was a case where the plantation system,
whether operated by European settlers or Sinhalese landowners, must
have visibly tended to produce a land shortage.
If landlessness developed slowly as a political issue in Ceylon, this
applied even more to unemployment, but when it did begin to be felt
acutely, soon after Independence, it brought the denunciation of the
ìmported labour' system on the estates to a head. The whole business
had always been repugnant to nationalist sentiment among the Sinhalese, who looked on the flood of incomers as mere birds of passage
(rather like their British employers!) whose main objective was to
return to their South Indian villages with money made in Ceylon.
Yet none of the various points of criticism found very vigorous
expression during the first century of the planting enterprise. Ceylon
lacked on the whole social philosophers of the Tawney or Hammond
237

type who could put into words the doubts and discontents of which a
minority must certainly have been aware. Up to the end of World War
I and some years beyond that, the existence of the plantation industry
and its virtual control by Europeans was accepted by the majority as
part of the natural order and on the whole a benefit, even a blessing,
to the country.
The older generation of patriots, then passionately seeking political
freedom, still regarded the industry as an asset to be controlled and
developed in Ceylon's interest rather than as an interloper to have its
neck wrung. That sharper twist was given by a younger generation
who had learnt their economic lessons in Britain itself during the
Laski period. When they returned home they found 'what seemed to
them imperialist and capitalist exploitation at its worst', as Pakemani
puts it. The situation was not in the least peculiar to Ceylon; it was
part of a world-wide feeling of frustration which was irritated rather
than appeased by the sight of any progress modern cities, new
power stations, railways, roads, even schools and hospitals which
could be regarded as the by-products of this alien commerce.
With the coming of Independence, therefore, it was widely feared
that drastic steps would be taken sooner or later to take control of the
plantation industry, and that these would probably not fall short of
expropriation. In the event, Ceylon's first independent Government,
drawn from the reformist element mentioned above, showed little
sympathy with such ideas. And even when, between 1956 and 1965,
a series of more radical administrations followed, including groups
which had placed nationalisation of the tea industry firmly on their
electoral programme, no measure actively hostile to or destructive of
the industry was introduced. There is a curious aspect to this: the
West has come so to equate Leftism in Asia with expropriation that it
was common to meet people during that period who were fully
convinced that the tea estates had actually been nationalised, and
asked what compensation, if any, had been received!
What in fact has happened since Independence? Regardless of the
Party in power, the policy has remained fairly consistent: To use
rigorous taxation of the industry to finance national development; to
restrain the export of its capital; to build up the importance of the
Colombo auctions; to secure the employment of Ceylonese management and staff; to broaden the basis of tea production by encouraging
Dr S. A. Pakeman in his recent Ceylon (London, Ernest Benn, 1964) gives a
fair and balanced account of this whole subject, which I only regret I cannot quote
in full.
238

smallholdings and starting State plantations; and to seek a solution
of the question of Indian Tamil labour. Collectively, these measures
have covered most of the grounds of criticism traversed earlier in this
chapter. They are an expression of Ceylon's growing awareness of the
tea industry as a national asset in which Government and people
should have a greater stake than ever before.
Taxation of the industry is imposed partly by the usual internal
methods and partly in the form of Export Duty. The latter, which
was levied at the rate of 35 cents per lb. in 1947, the year of Independence, has not only been raised repeatedly, but has been subject to a
good deal of experiment and adjustment.' Today, fiscal charges on
Ceylon's tea exports are higher than anywhere else in the world, and
represent something like 23 per cent of the average export price, as
compared with only 4 per cent before World War II. Income and
other taxes on the tea producers and exporters and on the individuals
they employ ensure that if, as Ferguson hinted, they used Ceylon as a
milch cow in Victorian times, this no longer applies in 1967.
In the capital field, the most important measures have been those
taken since Ceylon's balance of payments problem became crucial in
the late 195os i.e. to make it impossible for sterling companies to
sell their estates and repatriate the proceeds, and in general to restrict
the export of wealth of all kinds, whether corporate or personal.
Though cases of individual hardship have been met with understanding, it seems, at the time of writing, that it will be some time before
such restrictions can be generally relaxed.
The Colombo tea auctions, necessarily suspended during wartime,
re-opened in 1947, and measures to build up their importance began
directly the London auctions were in turn restarted in 1951. This
has been the trend throughout the producing countries, with the
result that whereas before World War II Mincing Lane handled
As from to June 1961 to date the Export duties and cesses on Ceylon Tea have
been as foliows:
Rs. per zoo lb.
exported
Export Duty .
35'00
Cesses
Replanting and Rehabilitation
4'00
Medical Aid
15
2'20
Propaganda .
t.00
Tea Research
.15
Tea Control
Total . 42.5o
239

about two-thirds of all tea sold by auction, now it deals with less than
a quarter.
The method adopted by Ceylon took the form of licensing all tea
exports; insisting that (with minor exceptions) no tea should be sold
direct off the estates but should pass through either the Colombo or
London auctions'; and restricting the quantity sent to the latex' by
means of quotas. This quota system was applied at first to all teas
(1953-9); then to High-grown and Medium-grown only; thereafter
exclusively to High-grown. The scheme has always been flexibly
operated. For instance, in the year 1956, when the quota was 32f
million lb. for each of the restricted categories, the amount of
Medium-grown actually exported was nearly 33f million lb., the
quota having been briefly relaxed because of an unusual accumulation of tea in Colombo at one period of the year. There were further
relaxations in 1956 and (for longer periods) in 1958 and 1959, when
Colombo prices had shown a sharp decline, and there have been no
quota restrictions since 1964.
The net result of all this has been that Colombo is now the largest
single tea auction centre in the world.
As regards employment, we took a look in Chapter x at the increasing number of Ceylonese estate owners and at the process of Ceylonisation both on the estates and in Colombo, and shall be returning to
this theme; all we need add here is a word about the measures to
encourage production outside the old charmed circle. The collapse
of coffee was a cruel blow, but the smallholders of Ceylon did gradually take up tea-growing, though at first in a desultory and unprofitable way; it is a crop which in fact only the conscientious can grow
well and for which only the super-conscientious are likely to give the
smallholder a remunerative price! In such a field Government action
is almost essential, to advise and if necessary subsidise the grower for a
time, and to help him to get a reasonable return for his labour.
The area of tea being grown by smallholders in Ceylon was approximately 63,000 acres at the time of Independence (as compared with
490,000 acres on estates) and the average holding was about an acre.
The Government's policy towards increasing the number of tea
smallholdings was conservative, and of the land acquired for the
purpose since World War II only a small area has come from estates.
1 This was enforced by the Tea (Tax and Control of Export) Act No. x6 of x959
in order to make possible the levying of a new tax at the auction point (intended to
afford a measure of relief to the producers of lower-priced teas); this tax was equal
to so per cent of any excess over an auction price of Rs. x85 per lb., subject to a
maximum of 70 cents.
240

It may be added that in recent years the aim has been actively to
discourage the breaking up of the latter (Tea and Rubber Estates
(Control of Fragmentation) Act, No. 2 of 1958).
On the other hand, the smallholders' advisory service, begun with
the appointment of one officer by the Tea Research Institute as far
back as 1930, was stepped up, and in 1952 came a subsidy to smallholders in the form of free seed. In 1956 followed the first Highgrown Colonisation scheme with plots of zi acres. The colonists'
expenses for clearing land and soil conservation were paid and they
were given free seed and free fertiliser for the first three years. Some
boo such holdings now exist and more are planned.
The average smallholder still sends his produce to one of the commercial 'bought leaf' factories' but except where special factories have
been started for the exclusive use of Smallholders' Co-operatives, his
best chance of a fair deal is probably to make a contract with one of
the larger estates which has spare manufacturing capacity and which
is prepared to take an interest in his output and apply fairly rigorous
standards to it. With an ever-rising intake of estate leaf putting pressure on factories, such arrangements are not easily come by today.
The bought leaf factories themselves are working beyond their rated
capacities, with adverse effect on the quality of their tea.
Formulae for payment have been worked out which make tea a
profitable crop for the smallholder if he maintains a good stand of
bushes and can raise his output above the zoo or 300 lb. per acre
which is still only too common. In recent years the number of smallholders has begun to rise and by the end of 1965 had reached 107,393
(97345 acres of tea).2
The other method whereby the Government has sought to increase
the direct stake of the nation in tea-growing has been the setting up of
the Ceylon State Plantations Corporation which is developing, among
other things, a big new tea estate from scratch at Pelawatte in the
Kalutara District.
And so to the most awkward problem of all that of the Indian
Tamil labour force. To understand what is happening now, we have to
make another of our short excursions into history. It is a tale in which
Altogether there are about 157,000 acres of tea (smallholdings and estates)
which do not have their own means of manufacture. They send their output either
to the. 8o or so bought leaf factories or to 300 out of the 87o estate factories in the
island. There are also 3 Co-operative factories and 3 owned by the State Plantations
Corporation.
2 For the Rehabilitation Subsidy Scheme for the smaller estates and smallholdings see page 246.

Q
241

restriction and encouragement from one side or the other alternate
confusingly.
Apart from a nominal embargo which lasted from 1839 to 1847,
the first overt move to control emigration to Ceylon was made by
India in 1917. In the interests of the war effort an Order was made
under the Defence of India Act prohibiting the emigration of unaccompanied males over the age of 18. As most movements were by
family groups this did not greatly affect Ceylon's labour supply and
the Order was revoked in 1919. Next it was Ceylon's turn to think
about restriction. The depression of 1920, combined with a rice
shortage, caused the question to be seriously considered; it was only
avoided by a system of alternative employment and relief works.
Then came the much more serious depression of 193o and this time
there was no escape over 25,00o members of the Tamil immigrant
community were sent back to India, and a further 27,000 under a
second scheme in 1932. More left in 1935-6.
It was now India's turn to take a hand again. By Regulations made
in 1937 under an Act which had been passed in 1922 but had not
hitherto been used in this connection, the classes of workers allowed
to go to Ceylon were restricted to (a) labourers who had been there
before; (b) those who were joining close relatives. Simultaneously
came the first signs of political pressure by the Sinhalese majority in
Ceylon to get rid of the immigrant Tamils. Further repatriation
schemes were launched in 1937 and 1939, the latter involving the
compulsory return to India of 7,000 labourers. As the result of this
the Government of India, on August 1939, placed a complete ban
on the emigration of unskilled labour to Ceylon. The trouble about
the ban was that it also stopped the immemorial ebb and flow of
workers between the Ceylon estates and what they still call their
`Coast' regular workers who happened to be in India at the moment
could not get back to their estates, and those in Ceylon were unable
to visit their families.
People at the time (not having prophetic gifts!) felt that such a state
of affairs could not possibly be allowed to last, and in 1940 a delegation went to Delhi in search of a new agreement. It was headed by the
future Prime Minister, Mr D. S. Senanayake, and the Planters'
Association contributed two observers. The mission failed, but
there were further negotiations in Colombo, and the ban was finally
lifted as from 1 September 1942.
For the next twelve years there was a steady traffic to-and-fro on
the normal lines, at least as far as numbers were concerned, though
242

subject to increasingly severe Governmental control, particularly
from the Ceylon side.
In 1948 Ceylon passed the Citizenship Act and in 1949 the complementary Indian and Pakistani Residents (Citizenship) Act. The effect
of these, taken together, was that all estate labourers who wished to
renounce their Indian nationality and to acquire Ceylon citizenship
by registration were required to submit their applications within two
years. It was soon apparent that as the result of the onerous conditions
laid down (one of which was a period of unbroken residence in
Ceylon) and the rigorous enforcement of them, many thousands of
such labourers would be unable to claim Ceylon citizenship they
and their dependants would be condemned, in perpetuity, to 'Statelessness', since India subsequently refused to recognise them as
Indian citizens either, despite their Indian origin.
Successive Prime Ministers, Mr D. S. Senanayake, Sir John
Kotelawala and Mr S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike had discussions with
Mr Nehru, Prime Minister of India, in attempts to solve the problem.
These discussions were all concerned with the same points the
number who could be expected to secure Ceylon citizenship, the
number that India would accept back as Indian citizens, and the
remainder who would belong to neither country.
An agreement was actually reached between Sir John Kotelawala
and Mr Nehru in 1954, but, owing to the intransigence of both
Governments, was not implemented.
In 1964, agreement was again reached between the Prime Ministers of the two countries, this time Mrs Bandaranaike and the late
Mr Shastri. This agreement closely followed the Kotelawala/Nehru
agreement and provided for the repatriation to India of 525,000
Indian estate labourers, together with their 'natural increase', over a
period of 15 years; for approximately 300,000 to become Ceylon
citizens; and for the fate of the remaining 150,000 to be decided later.
In effect, the problem of 'statelessness' remained unresolved.
Like the other 'agreements', the Bandaranaike/Shastri Agreement
awaits implementation, but it is an encouraging sign that some preliminary steps have been taken.
Meanwhile history had not passed the labour force by, while it
carried on with its traditional role, now nearly 140 years old. The
great change since we last examined it in Chapter 6 has certainly been
the passing of paternalism. As in the Western world, the worker now
looks to the State instead of the 'squire' or the boss for his welfare
services, and to his Trade Union for the protection (and extension)
243

of his rights. There are exceptions, of course, where perhaps by sheer
force of personality, a superintendent and/or his wife have retained the
traditional relationship with the people down at the lines, but the
usual verdict today is 'it only creates a muddle if you try to interfere'. Miss Bissett and her cholera mixture are superannuated.
The Trades Union movement has naturally been the most important harbinger of change. It is unnecessary to plot in detail its progress
on the industrial side among the tea estate workers, since it has been
along lines familiar everywhere. It had a late beginning, by Western
standards. It was not until about the year 1939 that a real impact
began to be made. It was a time of intense agitation in India against
the British regime. Mr Nehru himself paid a visit to Ceylon in that
year, and the result was the setting up of the Ceylon Indian Congress,
a body with strong political overtones.
It is widely believed that the famous Mooloya incident in 1940,
when a dispute on the Hewaheta estate of that name led to violence in
which a man was shot dead, was the first instance of a strike among
the plantation labour force. But for the workers on an individual
estate to 'down mamoties' over some real or fancied grievance (see the
P.D.'s Lament, page 86) was nothing new, and there were a number
of deliberately fomented strikes for at least a year before Mooloya,
including what has been described as an 'experiment' on Kotiyagalla
in April 1939.
After World War II there was a further wave of political strikes, or
'hartals' as they were then called, using the Indian term. The most
serious occurred in 1946, and was touched off by the Government's
action in acquiring Knavesmire Estate, Kegalla, for the purpose of
settling landless Sinhalese peasants.
In addition, the war and post-war periods were marked by 'lightning strikes' on all sorts of pretexts, which caused a great deal of disruption on individual estates. To try and eliminate these, the Planters'
Association had come to what was known as the 'Seven Point Agreement' with the three trade unions principally concerned. This was
abrogated after the Knavesmire affair in 1946, but by then the Association itself had withdrawn from the industrial field, realising that it
was not the right sort of body to deal with the innumerable petty
matters which were arising. At a meeting held in Kandy on 24 July
1944 under the chairmanship of G. K. Newton, the Ceylon Estates
Employers' Federation was formed, with Kenneth Morford as its first
President, and was immediately registered as a Trades Union.
Backed from the start by employers representing 65o,000 acres of
244

tea, rubber and other products and with nearly half a million workers
on their pay-roll, the Federation quickly gained in influence. It set
out to do two main things to protect the interests of its members in
all industrial matters, and (as specifically stated in its preliminary
memorandum) to 'promote and maintain good feeling between members and employees'. By concentrating on these objectives, and by
recruiting officials of impressive calibre to represent it, the Federation
has managed to keep the labour problems of an extremely vulnerable
industry within bounds, and though estate strikes continue to occur,
such disputes usually remain localised and are steered to a peaceful
conclusion. It should be added that while inter-union rivalries have
been the cause of much bitterness and the expenditure of infinite time
and effort by all concerned, the leading trade union officials have on
the whole proved themselves reasonable men round the negotiating
table.
Quite apart from disputes, the industry today is burdened with a
complicated wages-and-hours structure, in which ancient custom
and modern labour legislation are inextricably tangled. Here again,
the Federation has largely taken the task of interpreting laws and
agreements off the shoulders of the superintendent, though he still
has the delicate task of implementation!
The strange thing is that in spite of all this legislative top-dressing
and the decline of paternalism the estate labour force remains an oldfashioned affair. The reasons for this are technical, as well as
political. It is the former aspect which leaps to the visitor's eye. While
every other aspect of Ceylon's industrial life has been touched, however faintly, by Western ideas and techniques, and even the immemorial procedures of tea manufacture are being gradually streamlined, the workers, male and female, carry on almost exactly as they
did in James Taylor's day. Especially the pluckers! In fact, the more
up to date an estate is in other respects (the T.R.I.'s St. Coombs for
example), the stranger it is to see the old plucking ladies and their
daughters emerge from their 'lines' and set off for the unvaried
routine of gathering two leaves and a bud into their baskets and bringing them in to be weighed. It is a little as though, on an English or
Australian farm, every agricultural process had been mechanised,
except that the actual reaping was carried out by a gang of old women
with sickles.
The comparison must not be pressed too far, because this is selective, not mass harvesting; nevertheless, it is a process which some
people believe will be nearing obsolescence a quarter-century from
245

now. A short period in the life of our old and stickfast friend, the
tea-bush! By then, many estates will have really large areas of V.P.
tea, so even in their slope pruning, so uniform in their 'flush', that it
might be possible to use mechanical methods without sacrificing to
any serious extent the formula of 'two leaves and a bud'. On such
fields men armed, maybe, with battery-operated clipping machines
something like the one illustrated in Plate 14b, could move along the
rows; alternatively, where the planting layout permits in the more
level Low-country for example fully mechanised harvesting of the
Russian type, about which we have heard so much, might become
feasible, without loss of quality. Subversive thoughts! But when one
starts reading the tea leaves this is certainly among the patterns which
appear.
The chief instrument for ensuring the public accountability of the
industry was already to hand when Independence came. This was the
Tea Control Department set up in 1933 to carry out Ceylon's obligations under the International Tea Agreement. A further Interim
Agreement led to the Ceylon Tea Control Act No. z8 of 1949, and
this in turn was superseded by another Act of 1957. Under it, the
Tea Controller is responsible for collecting statistics; for the registration of tea lands, nurseries and factories; for issuing permits for the
planting of new areas of tea and the replanting of worn-out tea lands;
and for the licensing of dealers and the control of their activities.' He
has powers, too, over the quality of Ceylon's output through regulations against adulteration and the unauthorised disposal of tea waste,
and through the analytical control already mentioned in connection
with Blister Blight.
But the Tea Controller also has a constructive role to play. This
is by the use of two measures brought in during 1959. They were:
I. The Replanting Subsidy Scheme. Under this, estates which
undertook to replant with approved high-yielding clones could claim
a subsidy of Rs. 2,5oo per acre. The initial response fell below the
target of 5,000 acres a year and the subsidy was raised to a maximum
of Rs. 3,75o as from January 1963. As a result, the number of permits
issued jumped from 424 in 1962 to 1,115 (2,661 acres to 6,391) in
1963. The momentum has been more or less maintained and as at
February 1966, the total of permits issued was 5,649 (29,413 acres).
1 The issue of export licences under the Tea Tax and Control Act is handled
by the Commissioner for Tea Exports.
246

The subsidy is paid at various stages of the work and out of these
29,413 acres, 21,441 had been uprooted for replanting; 13,351 had
been actually replanted; and 2,871 acres had reached the stage of
satisfactory maintenance after three years and thus qualified for the
final instalment.
Subsidiary to this scheme was one for converting to tea old rubber
land which was unsuitable for replanting with its original crop.
During the great Ceylon rubber boom, planting was often carried up to
excessive elevations and much of this has long since been abandoned;
a considerable acreage has lingered on, however, and on mixed
estates in the Mid- and Low-country one can watch the interesting
process of 'sorting out' whereby tea will finally end up on the higher
slopes and rubber on the lower.
2. The Rehabilitation Subsidy Scheme. This was designed for
estates of less than i5o acres, and for smallholdings. The aim was to
complete the rehabilitation of something like 6o,000 acres between
1959 and 1968 by granting subsidies of varying amounts; to improve
the stand of tea (the number of bushes per acre in other words) on
the holdings; to pay for terracing and draining; and to make possible
an adequate use of fertilisers. The target has already been reached.
It may be added that the Treasury does not provide these subsidies by
means of a generous dip into the public purse! Their source is the Tea
Subsidy Fund, built up out of an extra export cess of 4 cents per lb.
On the whole, then, the pressures of the changing world which give
this chapter its title have been irksome rather than intolerable to the
planting interest. On the estate management side, they have been felt
chiefly in the staff and labour problems which I have outlined; at
boardroom level, in the weight of taxation and the difficulty of
financing improvements; by the overseas investor, in restrictions on
the free movement of his capital and, at times, of his dividends; and
on the human side, the inevitable break-up of a long-established way
of life, so far as the European planter is concerned.
In writing this book I have not sought either to exaggerate or to
minimise these problems, of which we can now take leave; everyone
concerned with tea recognises their existence, and on the whole
Ceylon can be thankful that there have always been enough men of
goodwill, from every section of the industry, to sit quietly down
together and solve them. It is curiously timely that we should be
celebrating our centenary at this moment of transition. May the
industry enjoy a further phase of partnership and understanding,
during its second century!
247
Chapter 15
RIVALS AND CUSTOMERS TODAY

N the early months of 1966 a significant piece of news began to
spread through the tea world and even to make a certain impact
outside it. This was that during 1965 Ceylon had achieved a triple
record its highest-ever production, highest-ever exports, and the
No. 1 position among the world's exporters. It had, moreover, sent
more tea than ever before to its oldest and best customer, Great
Britain, and had taken a record percentage share of that market. This
was not a freak result (in tea, as elsewhere, one-year statistics are a
booby-trap), but the latest stage in a trend which, with periodical
setbacks, has been going on ever since World War II and which will
be the principal theme of this chapter.
The rise in production is certainly the most impressive part of the
story, since it has been achieved without any substantial extension of
tea-planting in Ceylon. There are, as we have seen, a few thousand
acres more under smallholdings than zo years ago, but on the estates
the acreage remains the same, and so does the number of bushes!
The influence of re-planting with high-yield clones is something to be
reckoned with during the next quarter-century or so, not at this
moment. There may be a progressive estate here and there whose
output graph has already been given a steeper curve through clonal
tea coming into bearing, but the fact that the total area of such tea
yielding leaf by the end of 1955 was not more than 5,000 acres (1 per
cent of all Ceylon's tea land), puts the matter in perspective.
No, virtually the whole of this increased output has been coaxed
from bushes which were planted before 1900 and are now giving at
least 5o per cent more tea than they did in their vigorous youth. The
average return over the whole of Ceylon is now nearing goo lb. per
acre, but if one excludes small holdings and some of the low-yielding
little properties of less than loo acres, it is clear that almost any wellfound Ceylon estate can now be expected to give well over that x,000
lb. per acre which was Mariawatte's glory in 1884.1
1 A spot check on so rupee companies showed that in 1964 38 of them were

getting more than ',ow lb. per acre off their estates; 12 were getting less. The best
return was over 1,700 lb. but the general run was between 1,05o and 1,25o lb.
Sterling companies would probably show a somewhat higher average yield.
248

It has, of course, been achieved in the same way by heavier
manuring, though not with the street sweepings of Gampola! Studies
made by the F.A.O. Ceylon Fertiliser Project show how higher yields
have kept in step with increased applications of nitrogen, though the
exact correlation is somewhat intricate. The natural question follows:
Where is all this going to end? Current theory is that by the use of
the right fertilisers, by careful cultivation and perhaps by the
removal of shade, yields can be made to- rise to as much as z,000 lb.
per acre, even from old seedling tea, without injuring either the bush
or the soil from which it springs. With the V.P. tea of the future, on
the other hand, the sky seems to be the limit. When it was first introduced there was 'visionary' talk of 2,500-3,000 lb. per acre; then
4,000 lb. began to be mentioned, and now the figure of 5,000 lb. is
appearing even in scientific journals. Certainly no one who enjoys (or
fears) a vision of the future should miss any opportunity of visiting
the Rosehaugh Co.'s Kalutara estate of Millakande the Mariawatte
of our time where the notice board on a certain one-acre field bears
the following proud inscription:
Planted
Distance
Plants
TR 2023
TR zoz6
Pruned
4,800 lb. 1962
5,400 lb. 1963
May 1958
4 ft. x 2 ft.
4,840
1,0701
3,7701
September 1963
6,080 lb. 1964
8,003 lb. 1965
Like all V.P. tea, the field is a beautiful sight, dense, smooth and
even, and (as in the photograph of a similar field, Plate 8a), the
plucking girls seem to be positively engulfed in a sea of bright green
flush. The 8,003 lb. per acre has been achieved by the application of
480 lb. of nitrogen per year, and it can be said that so far the quality
of leaf obtained is in every way as acceptable in the sale-room as the
yield from normal seedling tea. These are early days; there is very
little V.P. tea in the world more than ten years old and less still that
is being manured on this scale; all sorts of things can still go wrong.
But even if the extreme example of Millakande is not followed, it is
hardly visionary to look forward to a time when Ceylon could be
I Indicates the number of bushes planted from each of two T.R.I. clones.
249

producing twice as much tea as today from a much smaller planted
acreage.
The significance of this goes beyond tea. We have reached a
moment when Ceylon's food supplies for her ever-increasing population are a matter of great anxiety. Much could be done to improve
things on the agricultural side, but it seems almost certain that CeylOn,
that small fertile island, will continue to be a net importer of food for
some years. Already the estates (for at least the third time in their
history)' have been asked to take part in a great food-production
drive, and one can notice the beginnings of this as one goes about the
tea country. Given stability in the industry and the hoped-for progress
of V.P., may we not see a prospect, in the long-term, of various forms
of diversification which might benefit the growers themselves as well
as helping them even more effectively to serve Ceylon?
But that is all for the future. The immediate problem of the increased pluck is to get it successfully through the factory, and then
to sell it! Built to handle the low yields of the past, starved through
stringent years of the capital expenditure needed to bring their
capacity up to date,2 Ceylon's tea factories today consist of a series
of inter-related bottlenecks. The worst is in withering. The nontechnical person, seeing a picture like Plate iib does not realise
immediately that all except the ground-floor of the fine upstanding
factory shown contains nothing but lofts full of hessian or nylon
shelves (`tats'), on which the leaf is laboriously spread to wither that
is, to become flaccid and suitable for rolling. This process may take
anything from 18 to 24 hours. A clumsy and time-wasting business
anyway, and one result of higher yields is certainly going to be the
adoption of such devices as the withering trough (Plate 13b); in this,
large quantities of leaf can be spread and controlled air currents
passed through them, thereby saving up to 25 per cent of withering
time as well as a great deal of space.
In the next phase, rolling, more and more Ceylon estates are using
the Rotorvane, which looks rather like a giant mincing machine
(though it does not actually chop the leaf), and reduces the time
needed for orthodox rolling enormously.
1 1917: Request from Colonial Secretary that in order to relieve the country's
dependence on imported foodstuffs, the workers should be given allotments on
unplanted land (Letter to P.A. dated is July); 192o: Drive to make the country
self-supporting in rice. Proposed levy on uncultivated lands. Estates subscribing
to Minneriya Development Co. (Low-country foodstuffs project) relieved of
obligation to cultivate on their own properties (Ceylon Association, London, report).
2 In 1966 the Tea Controller announced that loans were to be made available
for factory improvements.
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There have been advocates of extending to Ceylon the expressively
named C.T.C. (Cut, Tear and Curl) process; in Assam this is producing enormous quantities of the small-size leaf needed for the 'quick
brew' blends which are in fashion among the big London packets
today. However, such experiments as have been made (including a
recent one on Aislaby Estate) have not confirmed the suitability of
the process to Ceylon conditions at any rate in the Up-country.
The argument is too technical for a book of this kind, but it can at
least be contended that the mere fact that India is 'going C.T.C.' on
such a large scale (and is being imitated in Africa and elsewhere) may
be a good reason for Ceylon to stick to her present methods as long as
there continues to be a brisk demand for orthodox leaf in many of
the world's markets. Orthodox manufacture itself is, of course,
capable of improvements. It has been suggested, for example, that
the quality of leaf from the steamy Low-country could be stepped
up by the use of modern temperature control methods airconditioning in fact in the rolling and fermenting rooms, and a
hopeful beginning has been made on Mr J. L. D. Peiris' Miyanawita
Estate.
And while we are still on the factory floor, so to speak, we had
better start talking about prices. Because it is there, according to many
critics (though by no means all), that we may find one clue to the
dwindling return which has to some degree offset Ceylon's achievements in sheer quantity. The plain fact is that whereas up till about
1960 Ceylon teas enjoyed a premium of several pence per lb. over all
comparable sorts, today this is not the case. They often lag behind
the Assams worse still, they are only just holding their own against
some of the upstart Kenyas and Tanzanias!1 Now it is obviously
of no use Ceylon going in for orthodox manufacture and grading if
the results are not good enough to please the market she might as
well put everything through some sort of chopping-up process (as so
forcefully advocated on page 165), and hope to offset any further fall
in price by lower manufacturing costs per lb. Ceaseless care and
vigilance in the factory has always been the secret of her success, and
if the vast new yields are not going to turn out a mere encumbrance
F.A.O. estimated (1965) that in 1963 the average price of all teas was some
4 per cent lower than in 1957-9, but the Ceylons declined by 8 per cent. Average
export prices at Colombo fell by 9 per cent and at Calcutta and Cochin (South
India) by 5 per cent and 7 per cent respectively. In 1964 there was a further 1 per
cent fall on all in teas in London and an additional 1 per cent on Ceylons. Export
prices at Colombo were by then 12 per cent lower than in 1957-9. During 1965-6
a further overall decline in tea prices caused grave concern.
251

she has got to be sure that her new generation of teamakers is at least
as conscientious as the old, and is equipped adequately for its task.
Can this be done? Readers of this book may be able to make some
assessment of the human and economic problems involved.
Any alleged shortcomings on the production side are not the whale
explanation of disappointing prices. When higher output of any
article increases the supplies of it in the market place, one should not
be surprised that it becomes cheaper rather than the reverse! In disposing of his heavier crops, the Ceylon grower has not the Indian's
advantage in having an almost unlimited internal demand to compete
with buyers from abroad. It is true that on the whole the people of
India drink cheaper grades, compared with those exported, but the
safety valve nevertheless exists. Taking 1964 as the most recent year
for which an internal consumption estimate is available, India then
produced 826 million lb. of tea. Of this 464 million lb. were exported
and it is thought that, allowing for stock changes and so on, no less
than 321 million lb. went into the home market. Now the significant
fact is that this was a mere * lb. per head, i.e. less than a quarter
of what the Ceylonese drink. So even allowing for a somewhat higher
standard of living in Ceylon than in India, it can be justly assumed
that the latter in its drive for exports is holding back domestic consumption, which with the most modest revival of her internal propaganda campaign could probably be doubled thereby leaving practically no Indian tea for the rest of the world!
Ceylon would then indeed be sitting pretty, but since the last thing
likely to happen is for India to relax her search for foreign exchange,
let us not indulge in daydreams. . . . A look round the world's other
sources of supply holds both encouragement and warning. Along with
India, China and Indonesia are Ceylon's oldest traditional rivals; both
have had setbacks and neither at the moment has re-entered the race
with real vigour. From time to time there has been a big publicity
build-up for a Chinese swoop upon the market with graded black
teas, but her exports have, in fact, declined in recent years from their
post-World War II peak of about 1o8 million lb. (1959). Even though
the Government is known to be pushing on with tea-growing it is
unlikely that production is back to anything like the volume of say 3o
years ago, or is keeping pace with the needs of China's own vast
population at however skimpy a figure per head.
Indonesia, on the other hand, has recently made modest progress
in some important markets, notably Australia, the U.S.A. and on the
continent of Europe, but her 1964 production figure (103 million lb.
252

against 18 million in pre-war Java and Sumatra) is the measure of
her decline. Of the other well-established Eastern growers, Formosa
finds a steady market for about 3o million lb. of inexpensive tea, but
Japan seems to be becoming more of an importer nowadays rather
than a vigorous competitor in the export field.
In Africa and South America the picture is different. I have
mentioned the shock to Ceylon's pride when in the early 196os certain
East African marks began not only to top the comparable Ceylons
at the auctions, but had begun to find favour even with conservative
blenders who had always 'sworn by Ceylon' in the past. Given
intelligent management, these East African estates have very great
advantages well laid-out tea fields, insulation from many pests and
diseases, ultra-modern factories. Many of them also, particularly
the Kenyas, are 'high-grown' in the physical sense. And on the
financial side they have so far enjoyed a favourable taxation system
and no export duty! All this has led some Ceylon producers, as well
as others, to put money into Africa, though it is anybody's guess how
long the halcyon conditions there will continue to be enjoyed.
As an example of how rapidly a new rival to the older producers
can appear on the scene I would choose Argentina. F.A.O.'s Tea
Trends and Prospects, published only in 196o, records how planting
there started when imported tea was difficult to get during World
War II, and how the planted area expanded till it reached 75,000
acres in the late 195os. The article continues:
'In a comparatively short time span Argentina has thus changed from
a tea-importing country to a producing one, imports having completely
ceased since 1953. It may even become an exporting country in the not
too distant future. . . .'
But, the future had already arrived! In 1957 Argentina had sent
abroad her first ii,000 lb. of tea; in 1958 the figure was 389,000 lb.;
in 1959 over 1i million; 196o 6i million, 1961, nearly 12 million.
Argentina was on her way. Though it is likely that production is now
steadying down and there may even have been some reduction in
acreage, the whole story is a vivid reminder that what Ceylon did in
the 187os can be repeated elsewhere in our own time.
In all, some twenty countries and territories are regularly competing in the world's tea markets today, and so versatile has Camellia
sinensis turned out to be that this number is likely to rise rather than to
diminish. And while India remains Ceylon's only real competitor in
terms of quantity, the fact that many other producers are now offering
253

attractive teas at seasons and in markets which used to be peculiarly
profitable to Ceylon is one more reason why prices have become such
a concern to the latter.
In this uneasy situation, Ceylon has had to take a fresh look at that
trusty two-pronged weapon Regulation and Promotion. The former
has been in a dormant condition ever since World War II and its
aftermath of shortage. The International Tea Agreement itself lapsed
in 1955 and there has been desultory discussion about a replacement
for it, but if it was difficult to get and keep everyone in line in the
193os, when the producers were fewer and the emergency greater,
the problem would seem almost insuperable today.
Ceylon tried a new tack by inviting the Food and Agriculture
Organisation of the United Nations to hold a Conference at Nuwara
Eliya in May 1965. The aim was to sound out opinion on the formation of an F.A.O. study group, as had been done with coffee and had
led in due course to an International Coffee Agreement. But opinion,
when sounded, returned a hollow note. India thought there was not
much evidence of supply seriously outstripping demand for the
moment, and she was backed by other countries with ambitious
production targets and tea exports still in the expansion phase. The
most the conference would do was to agree to reconvene 18 months
later this time in Britain; by then the tune might have changed.
So Ceylon, as the only country to which tea is life and death, had
to sharpen up the other prong, Promotion. But before we go on to
that we need to see how she has actually fared in the various consumer
markets since those early days when 95 per cent of all her output went
straight to Mincing Lane and the rest was split between America,
Australia and that mysterious 'India and Eastwards'.
Just as Ceylon's competitors consist of one whale and a lot of lesser
fry, from salmon down to minnows, so it is with her markets. Today
the United Kingdom's 95 per cent share has declined to about 4o per
cent, but its offtake is still prodigious 176 million lb. out of 4721
million exported from Ceylon in 1965. The climb to these heights has
been characterised by a brisk rush up the foothills from 5o million to
114 million between 1890 and 1900 followed by a slow and rather
intermittent ascent to the point where every man, woman and child in
Britain is now drinking an average of over 3 lb. of Ceylon tea every
year.' No wonder Ceylon keeps such an alert and wary eye on London
demand and London prices!
1 This is out of a total absorption of about g4 lb., 4} lb. of the remainder being
supplied by India.
254

Among Ceylon's other durable old friends, Australia must certainly
take first place. In earlier chapters we saw what a dead-set was made
at this market how A. M. Ferguson did so well for Ceylon (and, as it
turned out, for himself) at Melbourne in 1881; how John Capper
marched forth to nobble Australia's capitalists at Calcutta in 188o
and how the Jetty Kiosk was mainly built as bait for her tourists.
Consumption was always brisk in that dry and thirsty land the
Planters' Association report of 1900 couples with this another Australian claim to fame in an amusing comment:
`The Australians are the greatest tea drinkers of the world, averaging
over 74 lb. per head per annum. They are also among the healthiest
people in the world and capable of defeating the choicest English players
in their favourite field game of cricket.'
Well, all right about the cricket, but as tea-drinkers the Australians
have lost a bit of ground (partly through the influx of coffee-habituated immigrants since World War II) and per head consumption
is some il lb. less than in 1900. In spite of occasional criticism of
the quality of the tea she sent in the early days, Ceylon quickly
established predominance, supplying a handsome 171 million lb. in
1900 and over 23 million ten years later. But after World War I a
warning note was struck. In a letter to the Planters' Gazette in 1921,
Mr Copland Mackie, a director of Harrison and Eastern Export,
pointed out that Java teas were penetrating into Australasia and
though there was no buying yet on a large scale, some of the samples
`compared very favourably with the corresponding Ceylons, especially
in the matter of stalk'. This was hotly controverted, but the `penetration' went on all the same though it was lowness of price rather than
absence of stalk that proved the main attraction.
By the mid-19208 it was neck-and-neck between Ceylon and the
then Netherlands East Indies, each contributing about 20 million lb.
up to the time of the 1930 slump. World War II and the over-running
of the N.E.I. handed the Australian market over brusquely to Ceylon.
We have already mentioned a slight Indonesian come-back, but in
spite of this and some recent initiative by India, Australia still takes
some 38 million lb. from Ceylon and is her fourth largest customer;
the teas she prefers may be described as useful medium types.
In New Zealand, another country where the Planters' Association
took an early hand in propaganda, Ceylon is even more strongly
entrenched, supplying nine-tenths of the 15 million lb. they drink
there.
255

The American story goes back nearly as far indeed if the Duke of
Argyll's enigmatic 'two boxes' were anything more than stray samples,
the U.S.A. must be almost as old a customer of Ceylon as Britain.
But the pattern of progress has been reversed a slow climb to start
with, a spectacular spurt, and a beautiful view at the top! In other
words, after some 3o years of pegging away in second place Ceylon
emerged as the chief supplier to the U.S.A. just when tea consumption in that country looked like taking wing at last. It was in the year
195o that Ceylon went ahead of India for the first time (44 million
against 414) the proportions in 1964 were 58 million against 251
This was out of an all-time record import of 1334 million lb., leaving
quite a lot for other suppliers; the U.S.A. has always been a traditional market for Japanese, Formosan and Indonesian teas, and is
now beginning to be interested in the Africans as well.
In Canada too there has been a swing, though not so pronounced,
from India to Ceylon, the proportions now being about 16 millions to
124. Canada (like the U.S.A. for that matter) gets a fair quantity of
additional Ceylon tea in the form of re-exports from the U.K., and
there has been the usual significant advance of the Africans in recent
years.
A market much prized once but today rather tantalising is the
U.S.S.R. It had prestige, and in the 'old days' the Moscow tea
merchant moved in a special kind of aura, unattained even by the
pillars of Victorian Mincing Lane. M. Rogivue was, indeed, after
something more than a will-of-the-wisp in his one-man foray during
the 189os. For decades before World War I, Russia was the world's
third largest importer (after the U.K. and Australia); in 1901 she
swallowed up 145 million lb. of tea 119 millions from China
(including, of course, the traditional brick-tea trade), 18 millions
from Ceylon and only 8 millions from India; by 1910 Ceylon's share
had risen to 194 millions.1
The Revolution smashed all that, of course, and for the next quarter
of a century or so it looked as though selling to the U.S.S.R. was
going to be one of those reluctantly abandoned illusions, kept alive
only by hints of barter deals from mysterious officials with snow on
their boots. It was also well known that the Soviet Government was
doing its utmost to exploit those old tea lands of hers around the
Caucasus and maybe establish new ones in her Central Asia territories
1 Additional tea used to go from Ceylon to Russia via China, which explains
her otherwise surprisingly large exports to the latter country. China has recently
re-emerged as a good buyer of Ceylon tea, taking just over to million lb. in 1965,
against 3.6 million in 1964.
256

as well. However, importing gradually got going again and in the
mid-193os had reached 5o million a year, most of it (as usual) from
China. After World War II and the emergence of China as a Communist Power, everyone had another guess. Surely, now, selfsufficiency must be near; and surely, if there was any little gap between
supply and demand, it would be covered by barter between comrades.
For some years the statistics remained obscure, but by 1956 the fog
cleared a little and we were able to see the U.S.S.R. bringing in some
27 million lb. from China and a modest 7 million from India (Ceylon
nil). And so it went on until 1961, except that far from withering
away, imports rose steadily and even Ceylon got a look in just
under 4 million over the three years 1958-6o.
Then in 1961 came the great ideological cleavage with China. The
Soviet palate developed an almost instant taste for Indian tea and
China lost 15 out of its 22 million lb. exports in a single year. The
U.S.S.R.'s purchases abroad were now, in fact, well below their 1959
peak and F.A.O. conjectured that a permanent decline might be
setting in. Wrong again. Soviet imports have gone up in the past three
years, with India getting the biggest share (53 million lb.) in 1965 and
Ceylon netting a nice II million of High-grown and fairly expensive
tea.
Another and very different region which does not mind paying good
prices for good quality is South Africa. This market can claim some
historical interest, since tea drinking is believed to have been introduced in the seventeenth century by Dutchmen sailing home via the
Cape with their strange new Eastern freight. China held on to her
monopoly rather longer here than in Europe, though when Indian
and Ceylon teas began to get known they were welcomed in the
English-speaking region of Natal and spread outwards from there.
While China tea went into its usual decline, India and Ceylon shared
the market pretty evenly, but then came the Indian boycott of trade
with South Africa and the market became, fortuitously, a Ceylon
preserve.
South Africa, incidentally, had gone through the Hemileia vastatrix
revolution ten years after Ceylon (1878); members of old planting
families like the Bissets who had more or less sought refuge there had
to turn over from coffee to tea; the latter survived in Natal until just
after World War II when it was abandoned because of inadequate
rainfall. Today there is talk (perhaps a little optimistic) of a big new
tea industry being started in the Northern Transvaal, with selfsufficiency as the goal.
R
257

A somewhat later starter than any of the above has been what
Europe calls the Near and Middle East, a great stretch starting with
Libya and U.A.R., swinging through the Levant and down across
Arabia to the Persian Gulf. At the time of writing, this area is absorbing the tremendous total of over 8o million lb. of Ceylon tea, p.nd
there is not the slightest doubt that it could take vastly more but for
the foreign exchange difficulties which have from time to time
threatened to bring trade between Ceylon and certain of her best
customers to a jolting stop.
The classic instance is the United Arab Republic. Up to 1955, the
Egyptians' long-held preference for Ceylon flavour had ensured a
regular import of some 25 million lb. per year. But at that stage the
U.A.R. Government, which had already kept supplies severely under
licence, took the more drastic step of insisting that trade should be on
a strict bilateral basis. Ceylon being without a textile industry at the
time, had no use for Egyptian cotton, and there was a limit to what
she could do about onions, potatoes, phosphates and cement; so
purchases were abruptly switched to India and China. Ceylon lost
four-fifths of her market, and though by careful negotiation some of
this has been won back,' the change-over is still much regretted by
consumers as well as traders in the U.A.R.
A simple need to be allowed to drink the kind of tea that suits
you! Yet one wonders how much longer any country in the modern
world will preserve this Fifth Freedom. . . .
Two markets which in recent years appeared to have been completely lost through their Governments' insistence on bilateral agreements were the Sudan (where Ceylon was catching up rapidly on
India) and Tunisia. However, the former has now agreed to resume
trading on the basis of reciprocal imports of Sudanese cotton against
Ceylon tea. No such formula has yet been found in the case of
Tunisia, but hope is not altogether abandoned. In Jordan, threequarters of Ceylon's former 4 million lb. market has been lost through
exchange difficulties.
Such losses have been more than counter-balanced by mighty gains
nearby. We hear little as a rule about the Kingdom of Libya as a teadrinking country, though its per head consumption is more than
twice that of, say, Tunisia or Morocco, with their penchant for Green
Tea, and more than eight times that of Algeria. Libya in fact now
One factor was the nationalisation of the retail petrol trade in Ceylon, which
made it possible for the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation to arrange substantial
imports from the U.A.R.
258

provides Ceylon with a snug little market of 8.5 million lb. (ninetenths of its whole intake). As we move eatswards, so the figures
mount. Syria and Lebanon, which between them bought only a
million lb. or so from Ceylon a decade ago, now absorb over 4 million
and ii- million respectively, and again Ceylon has the best of it;
Saudi Arabia (7.2 million), Aden (6.2 million) and Kuwait (4-7
million) are also consistent customers.
But the real miracle country is Iraq. With an absorption which
never ceases to expand year after year, her people have 'joined the tea
set' with a swing. The demand is predominantly for Low-country
Ceylons, and for the larger leaf in the B.O.P. grade. With a 45 million
lb. market at stake, it can be imagined what a tremor ran through the
auction rooms in August 1964 when Iraq, having nationalised the
importation of tea, suspended all purchases in Colombo while she
got her buying arrangements sorted out! Prices for the 'Iraqi types'
went to rock bottom and though buying was resumed in December,
this was under the dictation of a single buyer, the Iraq Government
Purchasing Board, which was in a position to control both the price
and quantities. Nevertheless, as compared with 1964, the export
figures for 1965 showed a slightly upward trend, even though there
had been a small decline in price.
Iran, taking 13.5 million lb. of Ceylon tea in 1965, is one of the few
countries which retains a preference for Flowery and similar large
leaf grades. The fact that Iran is trying earnestly to become a selfsufficient tea-grower did not prevent her paying a record 27s. 6d. per
lb. for a 378 lb. lot of Low-grown tea of Flowery type in Colombo,
September 1965. This reminds us that it is the Low-country which
mainly meets the demand for 'appearance' teas; what a nostalgic
pleasure it is, after the endless uniformity of B.O.P. and Fannings
Up-country, to visit a factory where anything up to is grades, headed
perhaps by one of these Flowery 'specials', are paraded for inspection!
We cannot pursue Ceylon's export story into every nook and cranny
of this complicated globe, but a word needs to be said about the
continent of Europe. There are some fine traditional markets here,
though none with a formidable poundage. We have seen Hamburg
listed as a 'destination' for Ceylon tea at a very early date, and it was
sufficiently popular in Germany at the turn of the century for the
Ceylon Commissioner in Europe to alert the P.A. about the number
of mixed (very mixed) blends which were being put forward under
the Ceylon label:
'I have bought as pure Ceylon tea in Berlin stuff which was afterwards
259

described by Messrs W. J. & H. Thompson of London as mostly
inferior China, value ad.'
Today, Ceylon supplies about one-fifth of Western Germany's
total imports of 20 million lb.
The Netherlands, regarded in 'colonialist' times and indeed much
later as essentially a Java and Sumatra market, has recently started to
share her favours around much more widely; out of net imports' of
22 million lb. Indonesia now sends only 6 million, against 5 million
from Ceylon, 4 from India and 2i from Africa.
Among the smaller European consumers, Ceylon supplies Italy
with 3 million lb. out of 5 million and France with i million out of
about the same import; Denmark with i million out of 3i million;
and has recently gained quite a foothold in that traditional Indian
market the Irish Republic, though the 5 million lb. or so she sends
there (out of a total consumption of over 20 million) is mostly bought
for 'price'.
Apart from the U.S.S.R., the Irish Republic and one or two smaller
Middle East territories, Ceylon has a promotional footing of some
kind in all the importing countries about which we have just been
talking. She is, therefore, strongly placed to wield the second prong
of her attack on low prices or sluggish demand, and because of
changes which have taken place in the pattern of world tea propaganda, she can in most cases do so independently if she wishes.
We have now to see how all this has worked out in terms of action.
I.e., imports retained for local consumption. The much higher figure for
Ceylon exports to the Netherlands given on page 292 includes the important
entrep8t trade.
26o
Chapter 16
AT THE SIGN OF THE LION

'In these days of showy, brilliant advertisements, it is necessary to
rival all other articles if we are to catch the public eye.'
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST - 1882
World War II, the International Tea Market Expansion
Board resumed its programme' and by the beginning of the
year 1952 had reached a high point of activity. Bureaux were
busy in Britain, the Irish Republic, the U.S.A., Canada, Australia,
New Zealand, the.Middle East, Central and West Africa, the Union
of South Africa, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Denmark. Not
only was the organisation complete and working at full pressure
through all channels of publicity, but the tea trade everywhere had
just about emerged from its long twilight of rationing and restrictions.
By September of that year plans were complete for the next year's
campaign and a budget of 73o,000 had been approved by all the
Governing Bodies.
At that moment, however, came a series of misfortunes.. Indonesia
said that for internal reasons she could not pay her agreed contribution; Pakistan, which had been counted on as a prospective member,
decided that after all she could not afford to come in; and then, only a
few days before the new financial year began, India announced her
withdrawal from the Board altogether. The main reason she gave for
this abrupt act was that she thought she could do better for herself by
promoting Indian teas as such than by subscribing to a general
campaign.
The result of all this was that half the International Board's funds
were lost at one stroke. Fortunately, with its old tradition of leadership in propaganda, Ceylon decided that this was the moment for
advance, not retreat! With the full backing of the Government, the
Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board guaranteed the International Board
its full year's contribution and asked it to carry on as far as humanly
possible with this; the withdrawing countries were also due to provide
certain ad hoc payments to cover inescapable commitments, and the
FTER
I Government representatives from the producing countries were added to the

Board in 1 949.
Oa

East African territories remained members of the Board for the time
being.
When they sat down to look at the situation, the International
Board decided that they would be able to keep campaigns going in
such major markets for Ceylon tea as the U.K., the U.S.A., Canada,
Australia, Egypt and South Africa, In one respect things turned out
a little better than had been feared. Since the year 195o the American
tea trade had been subscribing jointly for propaganda with the
International Board and now, inspired by Ceylon's initiative, the Tea
Association of the U.S.A. invited India and other main producing
countries to contribute directly and jointly with it to an organisation
(which later took the name 'Tea Council'), so that generics promotion
could be continued without a break. The response was good, the
founding producer members being Ceylon, India and Indonesia, and
the pattern was followed later in Canada (1954) and Western Germany (x955). Tea Councils have also been formed in certain countries
alongside uni-national campaigns, but we shall come to these later
on.
In spite of these rescue operations, the immediate effect of the split
was seismatic, especially among those who were vigorously operating
campaigns under the International Board's banner. In Britain, for
example, the news came through during the planning stage of a
comprehensive Tea Week in Sunderland, undertaken at the request
of the local trade, which was to have ushered in a whole series of 'postrationing' promotions and which was allowed to run its course. In
Ireland, the Dublin Tea Fair was just beginning, with a full complement of shop displays, public competitions, a baby elephant and a
captive balloon; and so it went in all the threatened or doomed
campaigns.
The survivors now found themselves transformed into propagandists for Ceylon,2 and this turned out to be a stimulating experience.
Conversely, the way in which the initiative had been grasped took the
withdrawing countries by surprise, and it was not long before they
began to regret their decision.
The objective was to encourage a public demand for pure Ceylon
1 The use of this term for 'tea as tea', as distinct from 'uni-national', promotion
actually came in about 1965. It is not very expressive, but it serves.
2 Until the final withdrawal of the East African contributors at the end of 1954,
the Board's United Kingdom campaign continued to be generic in character,
though with an increased Ceylon emphasis. Thereafter, I.T.M.E.B. became, in
effect, the overseas promotion agency of the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board, its sole
remaining sponsor. The Board's constitution was under review during the latter
part of 1966.
z6z

tea or, where this was not feasible, for blends with a high Ceylon
content, and to convince the trade that this demand was worth
meeting. Such, as we have seen, has always been the dream of Ceylon
tea men abandoned with intense reluctance, and revived whenever
a gleam of opportunity has appeared. Many of us who have lived for
years with this problem have come to believe that somehow tea has
taken a wrong turn in the world's mass markets. Admittedly, the
sheer size of the latter (as Tommy Lipton discovered all those years
ago) would make it impossible to provide everyone with a fine
aromatic tea straight from the mountains or plains of Ceylon. But
unless something like the 'real thing' is made fairly widely available,
how can a standard be established whereby the product as a whole
can be judged, and how can we hope to convince the consumer that
tea-drinking ought to be an enjoyment and not just a (possibly
declining) habit?
Which leads to another question. 'Is Ceylon tea then so different?'
the sceptic interposes. Not so different as chalk from cheese or, say,
Lapsang Souchong from a strong black Assam. If one had to draw a
simple distinction between typical Ceylon tea and nearly all its rivals,
I suppose the firmest claim would be for superiority of flavour. Nobody knows just how this comes about, but the fact that so much of it
is grown on open hillsides near or above the 4,000 ft mark, with the
sun shining down on them and the wind blowing in from the sea must
have something to do with it. It is hard to believe that given the
chance to taste this golden, mild and charming beverage, the housewife and her family would not come back for more! And some recent
initiatives have begun to prove the point.
It would be impossible to ramble here over the whole vast field of
promotion in which the Ceylon Board's overseas Commissioners set
about their new task, but there are certain aspects of it which bear
closely on what we have just been discussing. The first is that the
various campaigns are solidly grounded in the place where the tea is
actually sold the grocer's shop and its modern extension, the
supermarket. The Commissioners have always mistrusted the idea of
advertising in vacua; they like to be sure the Ceylon or Ceyloncharacter tea is there before they invite the public to go and buy it!
And in case this sounds embarrassingly obvious, I must reply that it
is in fact a long, laborious and sometimes discouraging process, which
for that reason is often by-passed by advertisers intent on short-cuts.
The U.K., Australasia and various European countries are examples
of where this policy has been painstakingly followed, and has paid
263

off whenever funds have, in due course, made consumer advertising
possible.
As an aid to identification, the Lion badge of Ceylon has been
widely adopted as the symbol of Ceylon teal; it appears not only on
the many new Ceylon packs which are being produced, but on the
redesigned labels of existing packs, including some put out by the
biggest distributors in the world. It is this lion that appears on my
title page.
Secondly, there is the technique of the permanent sampling operation, or Ceylon Tea Centre (Plates 23 and 24). This was actually a
legacy from the International Tea Market Expansion Board's former
generic campaign. The lease of the original Tea Centre in Regent
Street, London, was acquired during World War II and it was opened
to the public in 1946. It started life simply as an exhibition and meeting
place, and it was planned by Misha Black, some of whose earliest
work had been done for the Empire Marketing Board an example of
that continuing tradition of first-class design referred to in the
previous chapter. It was always envisaged that the sampling of good
tea to the public would be an essential part of propaganda, but it was
thought best that this should come about naturally by popular
demand. Sure enough, visitors soon began to ask why they could not
have a cup of the beverage which was being 'sold' to them so elegantly,
and after a year or so a shy little Tea Bar was opened in the depths of
the building. Thence has sprung a network of thriving Centres which
under Ceylon's auspices spread out to cover six main regions of
England and Scotland and which in 1965 served pure Ceylon tea to
the British public on the following formidable scale:
London 595,144 cups
Glasgow 639,166
Manchester 368,731
Leeds 304,982
Birmingham 383,450
Exeter 347,446
Total 2,638,919
Naturally, the idea was quickly taken up elsewhere. Australia
opened its first Ceylon Tea Centre in Melbourne in 1959, and when
that throve started another at Sydney four years later and a third at
1 Australasia adheres to an earlier symbol, the Drummer.
264

Brisbane in 1966; Copenhagen's charming little Centre dates from
1961; Rome too had its Centre for several years, but the idea was too
novel for that conservative city and the Ceylon Tea campaign' had to
revert to more orthodox methods. A Centre with a more restricted
brief is that operated by the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board at its
Colombo headquarters; here tea is drunk by invitation, so to speak,
by parties visiting the Centre's cinema and exhibition, or attending
meetings a routine, incidentally, also followed for a time by the U.S.
Tea Council in New York.
The information aspect has not, of course, been neglected by the
other Centres, and they have been pioneers in the idea of providing
space for exhibitions (not necessarily linked with tea) which can be
relied on to bring a fresh public into their orbit. The supreme example
of this is, undoubtedly, the original Centre in Regent Street, London;
exhibitions by the score have been held in its famous gallery, with the
result, among other things, that it has probably received more Royal
and other V.I.P. visits than any building of comparable size and
function in Great Britain.
In the U.K. and Australia respectively the Ceylon Tea Centres are
now supplemented by such ventures as the Colombo Tea House at
Brighton and three Ceylon Tea Corners run by large departmental
stores in Adelaide, Perth and Hobart under Tea Bureau auspices.
From sampling tea to sampling teas. . . . When E. Turing Mackenzie of Maskeliya wrote powerful and prophetic letters to the Ceylon
Press in 1881, urging the establishment of a CEYLON TEAHOUSE in
the West End of London, he clearly envisaged a rendezvous where
people could buy Ceylon tea by the packet as well as drinking it by
the cup. But we have also seen what mud was stirred up whenever the
planters tried to 'push' their teas by establishing their own organisation to sell them. By-passing the trade . . . that, of course was the
trouble. So the Centres and Bureaux went slowly on this, beginning
usually by offering small sample packs on exhibition stands or making
up attractive caddies as Christmas gifts. But in fact, as happened also
with catering, trade criticism has turned out to be something of a
bogey, and now everyone regards it as natural and even essential that
visitors should be allowed to buy good Ceylon tea as well as being told
where they can get it nearer home.
During the past three years an entirely new section of this field has
I.T.M.E.B. was not operating in Italy at the time of the break, but in view of
the keenness of the trade about Ceylon Tea promotion, an office was opened in
1957.
265

been opened up by the 'Four Fine Ceylon Teas' project, originating
in the U.K. Attractive tins are filled with straight garden teas from
three of Ceylon's famous 'high-grown' districts Dimbula, Nuwara
Eliya and Uva and from a more loosely defined fourth area to which
the name of Kandy has been given; both on the canisters and on the
special gift pack which contains them, the characteristics of each tea
are explained. Designed originally for sale in the Ceylon Tea
Centres, the new packs took the imagination of the trade; Four Fine
Ceylon Teas are now being produced in many parts of the United
Kingdom and are being taken up in Western Europe and other areas.
To round off the propaganda picture before going on to the final,
somewhat dramatic events to be recorded in this book, a word must
be said about what had been happening in South Africa, in the Middle
East, in Western Europe and on the Tea Council front.
The South African market, for reasons already explained, differs
from all others in that it is insulated from Indian competition, and
even an attempt to introduce low-priced African teas a few years ago
met with little success. The task there has been to widen the appreciation of tea among all races and classes and to take advantage of a
rising standard of living. This has been done by an ingenious and
varied advertising campaign, using Press, radio, cinemas, hoardings the lot. The result has been a steady rise in tea imports 85 per cent
of them Ceylon.
Promotion in the Middle East has been much at the mercy of
political and economic upheavals. There have been long periods
during which the Ceylon Board's Cairo office has been on a care and
maintenance basis, or has acted mainly as a liaison agency to negotiate
barter arrangements, as described in the previous chapter. The
abounding Iraq market, on the other hand, has justified most careful
cultivation, and Ceylon propaganda has been continuous there since
1955. Today a Chief Commissioner has been re-installed in Cairo,
with a 'parish' that covers not only the U.A.R. and Iraq (which retains
its own Commissioner), but all the heterogenous territories from
Libya to Kuwait.
Western Europe is an interesting field. Ceylon activity has been
stimulated by two things the adoption by the Common Market of a
nil tariff on tea, and the re-appearance there of Indian propaganda.
Through the agency of I.T.M.E.B. the Ceylon Board now conducts
regular merchandising and exhibition campaigns in Belgium, the
Netherlands, Switzerland and France, with the addition of limited
consumer advertising in the latter. Throughout these countries, it has
266

had considerable success in persuading the trade to launch new
Ceylon packs.
We have seen that tea propaganda is strictly generic in several
famous markets served by Tea Councils the U.S.A., Canada and
Western Germany, but a new class of Council, which does not preclude uni-national promotion, has emerged of late. The first was in
Denmark, where there is a Council operated jointly by Ceylon and the
local tea trade, but both Ceylon and India carry on with their own
propaganda programme. More recently (1963) came the setting up
of a Council in Australia, with a generic campaign to keep 'tea as tea'
before the public in that highly competitive beverage market. France
too followed this trend by forming, in December 1964, a Tea Council
backed by Ceylon, India and the local trade, but with no bar to uninational promotion. Finally, in June 1966, on the initiative taken by
Ceylon, agreement was reached between representatives of India,
Ceylon and the tea trade for the formation of a Joint Tea Council in
New Zealand.
The scene was, therefore, set for the recent developments which
have given a new look to promotion in what is still the greatest of all
markets, the United Kingdom. Years passed after the break-up of
1952 before India began to make an independent reappearance in this
field with touring propaganda vans and the opening of Indian Tea
Centres in Edinburgh (1963) and London (early 1964)1. But in 1962
had been heard the first of a series of calls from the British tea trade
for a joint campaign to meet what was regarded as a somewhat
menacing position. This was the stagnation, if nothing worse, of the
demand for tea in Britain at a time when a prosperous society was
spending more and more money every year on a variety of other
drinks, including coffee. As time went on the current estimates of tea
consumption per head gave increasing colour to this:
9.4 lb.
9.5 lb.
9.2 lb.
9-o lb'
1962
1963
1964
1965
Support for a generic campaign came from both the Indian and
Ceylon producers and their Governments. The proposal was put
forward in the form of a 'million pounds campaign', using mass
1 In 1954 India had formed a Tea Council jointly with the trade of the Irish
Republic and in March 1963, a Tea Centre was opened in Dublin.
a National Food Survey (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries & Food).
267

media, including the now ubiquitous commercial television. It took
three years to get the plan agreed by all parties, and this involved
some financial 'slimming'. By the autumn of x965 it was off the
ground and on to the television screens, the hoardings and the other
media. Its chosen theme of 'Join the Tea Set!' made an immediate
impact, though at the time of this book going to the printer (just a
year after the 'launch') it is too soon to say what direct effect it has
had on consumption.
In certain quarters in the U.K. it was assumed that this longdelayed getting together with the trade would lead to the dropping
of uni-national campaigns. But this was not so. India and Ceylon
carried on with their chosen work; the former, in fact, temporarily
took the lead in advertising, particularly in those high-circulation
women's magazines which are such a lure to the advertising agent on good evidential grounds.
Ceylon, in her traditional way, refused to be content with second
place and in February 1966, the Propaganda Board obtained the
approval of the producer associations, the Ceylon Association in
London and the Government to an increase in the legal maximum
of the cess from Rs. 2.5o per loo lb. to Rs. 4, with an immediate
increase of R. 1. (i.e. from Rs. 2.2o to Rs. 3.2o). Legislation was
introduced later in the year. The higher cess was reckoned to bring
in an extra Rs. 5 million in a full year, and made it possible for the
Board to authorise the Ceylon Tea Centre in the U.K. to embark
on a large-scale advertising campaign as from the autumn of 1966.
Thus, for the first time, Ceylon had the means of putting national
advertising behind its propaganda in Britain. And the old contention
over competitive versus co-operative tea promotion, which we first
encountered in 1885, took yet another turn!
The controlling force behind all this has, of course, been the Ceylon
Tea Propaganda Board. Since it came into being thirty-five years ago,
its functions have not greatly changed, though there have been minor
adjustments in its membership. It is still a harmonious grouping of
planters and traders, with the Government representatives (as is
inevitable today) playing a more decisive part. The first Organising
Secretary (Mr H. Hopwood) moved to the Board's London Office in
1934 and later to I.T.M.E.B. and was succeeded by Mr Malcolm
Dando, who carried on until his rather sudden death in February
1948. At that point the Board chose its first Ceylonese Organising
Secretary (later Director and Secretary) in the person of Mr Clarence
Coorey, a former member of the Indian Civil Service, and it is he who
z68

has steered it through all the testing events which I have described.
Mr Coorey retired late in 1966, to become Ceylon's High Commissioner in Australia.
In recent years the operational duties of the Board have been much
increased by the creation, as mentioned earlier, of two theatres of
propaganda: Europe (including the U.K.) and South Africa remain
the responsibility of I.T.M.E.B., but the Middle East and Australasia
report direct to Colombo.
The Ceylon Board also continues, of course, to operate the promotion campaign in Ceylon. This work, aimed at stimulating the
consumption of good, properly brewed tea, is conducted by means of
a Tea Caravan service; by the improvement of tea service in schools
and rest-houses, and similar advisory work; by publicity measures
using the cinema, booklets and posters; and by the sale of high-quality
tea to tourists and visitors not only at the traditional Colombo Port
kiosk, but at the airports of Ratmalana and Katunayake. The latter
airport has a liquid service as well.
The progress of Ceylon Tea could be described as a success story

with some anxious interludes, or a rising graph with some dips in it.
Today, in spite of the flourish of records with which Chapter 15
opened, the outlook is far from set fair. It never has been. The eternal
question, of course, is whether the people of the world will be able or
willing to drink all the cups of tea which the enthusiastic growers are
going to pour out for them ! We have seen how Promotion and
Regulation have both been called in aid at various times and the price
declines of 1965-6 have given them an urgent topicality once more.
Some believe also that in the future a significant part, at least, will be
played by adapting the product itself to the modern world by
turning in fact a sizeable proportion of it into instant tea.
Ceylon has had a fairly long connection with this movement.
Instant tea was, of course, an American sequel to instant coffee, both
being produced by various methods of dehydrating the liquid product
but, more recently, there have been attempts at what seems to be a
logical short-cut manufacturing instant tea from green leaf in the
countries of origin. It was in 1958 that the Ceylon Government
decided to give some support to what was known as the Thornhill
process, originated by Mr P. W. Thornhill of Denawaka Estate.
Laboratory samples were favourably commented upon, but in fact
269

production never began in Ceylon; an instant tea based on the process
is now being manufactured in Uganda.
Simultaneously, on the initiative of Dr A. W. R. Joachim, the then
Director, the green leaf technique was being investigated by the Tea
Research Institute, with some assistance from the Ceylon Institute of
Scientific and Industrial Research. What appeared to be a satisfactory
process was evolved, and the name of CEYTEA was given to the new
product. It was then handed over for commercial exploitation to a
Ceylon-based company formed in 1962 under an Agreement between
the Government of Ceylon and the West German firm of Haelssen &
Lyon. A pilot factory was set up in the Agrapatna district and by 1964
some consignments of Ceytea had filtered into the market in the U.K.
and elsewhere.
In October 1965, the Government agreed to the formal transfer of
the Haelssen & Lyon interest in the Ceytea Company to the Margarine Union G.m.b.H Hamburg (a company of the Unilever
Group) and permitted certain amendments in the Agreement. A
period of intensified research and development was then announced.
Meanwhile other green-leaf processes, in addition to the Thornhill,
were under trial in Africa and India and now the whole Tea World
awaits the outcome.
Clearly, there is a demand for instant tea (in the U.S.A. alone its
percentage share of the whole market rose from less than 4 per cent in
196o to 23 per cent in 1965) and equally clearly, if the green-leaf
method succeeds, it will completely by-pass the familiar channels of
trade. On the other hand, the technical difficulties of obtaining an
absolutely uniform powder or crystal from an organic substance so
susceptible to weather and seasons as the leaves of Camellia sinensis
are very great, and the final result is far beyond prophecy.
Meanwhile, Ceylon tea production goes on mainly in the orthodox
way, but at a heightened tempo. Indeed, as was stressed earlier in this
chapter, one of the most remarkable things about the industry is the
degree to which its well-established pattern has survived every change
in management and control. This whole book has, in fact, been the
chronicle of such changes. Our Epilogue will be devoted to summing
them up.
270
Epilogue
OLD ACRES, NEW MEN

`We say, therefore, All-hail and Good-fellowship to our Ceylon Tea
Brethren; and may the united power of Purity and Real Economy ...
triumph over Inferiority and Adulteration.'
TEA PLANTER'S VADE MECUM
H E ownership of Ceylon's 3,000 or so tea estates was dealt with

statistically in Chapter 1, but the figures do not tell the complete story. Up to about zo years ago, it seemed as though the
days of the proprietary planter were almost over, and that apart from
a very few 'old stagers' (among whom the late Robert Scott ought to
be mentioned), everything was passing inevitably into the control of
joint stock companies, whether rupee or sterling. But about the same
time Ceylonese entrepreneurs, who had always had an extensive stake
in rubber and coconut and, of course, a lesser one in tea, began to
interest themselves more keenly in the latter. Moreover, whereas
their activities had in the past been mainly centred in the Lowcountry, they now moved into the High-grown regions as well. Today,
as Appendix V shows, many a famous old pioneer estate in regions
like Maskeliya is in the hands either of an individual Ceylonese owner
or of a 'one estate' private company, which amounts almost to the
same thing.
The Ceylonese proprietary planter has, in fact, a number of
advantages, of which the chief is being able, very often, to work to a
lower level of cost than the big rupee or sterling group. For example,
he frequently acts as his own agent, and either he or a relative may
be superintendent as well. Thus the progress of the industry has
become a personal concern to a much larger number of Ceylonese
families than ever before. The circle of ownership will, no doubt, tend
to widen still further, though at a speed which will depend partly on
Government policy with regard to the repatriation of purchase
money when foreign-owned estates change hands.
On the managerial side, we have already seen a new generation of
Ceylonese P.D.s and S.D.s taking over from the former regime. Tea
estate management, in fact, is from now onwards going to be an
important career for intelligent and well-educated young Ceylonese,
271

and it might be worth considering whether special facilities should
not be given for their professional training.' They certainly have a big
role to play in the 'politics' of tea. Ceylon benefited in former days
from the almost aggressive leadership of the British planter, and she
will look to their successors for the same kind of stimulus. A start has
already been made in the central and local Planters' Associations; the
Estate Employers' Federation and the Planters' Society, which provide an increasingly important arena for the new young men as the
last European office-holders disappear.
Among the paid officials, the change-over is almost complete.
The Planters' Association itself recruited its first Ceylonese Secretary
in 1964. Other professional and technical bodies which followed the
pioneering example of the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board in choosing
a Ceylonese chief executive include the Chamber of Commerce and
the Ceylon Association in London. The International Tea Market
Expansion Board has had a Ceylonese Organising Director since
1953. The Tea Research Institute, while continuing so far to recruit
its Directors from the world's pool of scientists has (like the other
bodies mentioned above) been managed by a predominantly Ceylonese Board for many years. These are only a few out of innumerable
instances in which, by a gradual and friendly process rather than by
abrupt revolution, the leaders of the European community often
leaders in Ceylon's public life as well have handed over to Ceylonese
colleagues of many years' standing. And the good work goes forward
as before!
In the commercial world, the balance between European (mainly
though not wholly British) and indigenous financial interests in
everything to do with the storage, sale and shipping of the crop has so
far remained relatively undisturbed, but the management of the great
Colombo houses is passing steadily into the hands of Ceylonese
directors and executives. Anyone who has met them either on their
home ground or on selling missions abroad knows that they are 'hot
gospellers' for Ceylon tea, and that the industry is going to gain much
from their whole-hearted commitment to its growth and prosperity.
The idea of co-operation is strong, in fact, in and around the Fort.
It was this that made it possible for the trade to organise, in February
1966, the first-ever Tea Convention to be held in a producing country.
Ceylonese and British executives combined to give a magnificent
1 Since the above was written, the Ceylon Planters' Society has put forward plans
for an Institute of Planting, which may meet just this need. For those already in the
industry the Society has for some years conducted examinations in all branches of
estate work, and granted certificates which are much prized.
272
17a. 'The jungle tree rears its sturdy stem'.

Mother bush a month after pruning.
17b. When the tea tree grows up. These

seed-bearers at St. Coombs reveal the
striking differences between jats.
The `V.P.' process

in Ceylon
a. Setting out the leaf
cuttings.
b-c. Shade for the
young plants is allimportant. Left,
hessian mats: right,
fern.
d. A big covered nursery in the Low-country (Sapulmakande Estate).
i9a. A Tea Research Institute scientist injects a leaf with radio-active carbon in order to
study how the constituents of tea are produced by the bush.
19b. Tea-tasters at work (Messrs. Forbes & Walker's saleroom).
zoa, zob. The Fort, Colombo, above, in i866 and below, the same view in 1966.
21a, 21 b. Above, bidding for 'Golden Tips'. A famous photograph taken in the Mincing Lane
auction room on 7 May i89i, when a Gartmore lot was knocked down for 25 los. od. per lb.
Below, modem auction, Colombo.
inisti 'WO
22a. S.S. Duke of Argyll, owned by the Eastern Steamship Company. The first ship recorded
as carrying Ceylon tea to London (1877).
zzb. Trincomaleeembarking tea by lighter while the freighter waits off shore.
aE
(a)
23a. Serving Ceylon tea at the Salon

des Arts Menagers, Paris, 1966.
z3b. Ceylon Tea Centre, Copenhagen,
Denmark.
23c. Ceylon Tea Centre, Melbourne,
Australia. Mural by Gamini
Wanesuriya in the background.
1
24. H.M. The Queen visits an exhibition at London's Ceylon Tea Centre, August 1962.
OLD ACRES, NEW MEN

welcome to Ceylon's customers from all over the world, and everyone
I have met who attended the Prime Minister's reception at Temple
Trees and the subsequent sessions in Colombo and Nuwara Eliya
agrees on how timely and fruitful the initiative was.
All this is a tribute to the resilience of the private sector. But the
fact has to be faced that the biggest single element of Ceylonese
participation affects foreign and indigenous entrepreneurs alike namely, the part played by Government. It has not been an easy
road the approach to an accommodation between what was always
an ultra-independent, free-ranging enterprise and a political ideology
mistrustful of any such thing! Attitudes were taken up, over the years,
which did not always reflect the common concern of both sides that
tea should contribute to the utmost to the country's progress. I am no
linguistic philosopher, but I have noticed that in Ceylon, as elsewhere,
verbal incantations tend to perpetuate out-dated ways of thought.
Our particular industry, for example, has been a martyr to egg
metaphors: 'You must not kill the goose which lays the golden eggs',
the chamber or association chairman would intone; 'Ceylon must not
put all her eggs in one basket', came the antiphon from the ministerial
guest. . . .
It is hoped that these loved cliches will move peacefully into retirement now that there is emerging from the tension of ideologies
something which it is not too optimistic to call a partnership a
partnership between the State and the industry, in which we have
seen nationals of the country, over the last quarter of this hundred
years' history, moving increasingly to places of leadership and responsibility in a smooth, organised and well-intentioned transfer. The
State needs the tea industry not just for the revenue it produces but
to set the pace for Ceylon's national effort. This received notable
recognition in the Agricultural Development Proposals 196617o.1
Here far-reaching suggestions were made for helping tea to fight
`barely economic prices in a highly competitive world market', and
annual production was seen as going up by no less than go million lb.
during the five-year period.
Early in this book I wrote of the tenacity of the tea bush and its
effect on any country where it is grown. This applies to planters too.
As the tea fields change only imperceptibly from one generation to
another, so the men who work them pass an ethos as well as a method
from hand to hand. I think that once they had got used to mechanical
I Prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture & Food and published by the Ministry
of Planning and Economic Affairs, January 1966.
273

transport and a diminution in their fellow-Europeans, the heroes of
my earlier chapters would find much to please and little to baffle them
if they returned to Ceylon's tea country in its centennial year. G. H. K.
Thwaites and James Taylor doing the round of St Coombs with
absorbed delight and pertinent comment; Harrison and Leake admiring the output figures (but looking serious over prices); the old Thirty
Committee clique eager for news of successful propaganda abroad;
the Fergusons, uncle and nephew, cramming their notebooks with
fodder for the 'Trop. Ag.'; George Wall perfectly at home after
sounding off at the Tea Convention. . . . And all of them surely
entranced by the change in the growing tea itself, from something a
little ragged, a little scruffy, as they knew it, into rich and rolling
stretches of beauty and abundance.
This book begins with a dedication to three old companions, but
I am confident they would approve it ending with another of a wider
sort: To those pioneers of zoo years ago and to all who worked with
them, of whatever race or colour, to build a new industry for Ceylon
out of what seemed like irretrievable ruin.
Appendix I
THE MORICE REPORT
The title-page reads: REPORT ON A VISIT TO SOME OF THE TEA
DISTRICTS OF INDIA, WITH A VIEW TO ASCERTAINING THE
SUITABILITY OF CEYLON FOR TEA CULTIVATION: By Arthur
Morice: Ordered by His Excellency the Governor, to be printed:

Colombo: P. W. S. Keen, Government Printer: 1867.
In arranging the following extracts from Morice's voluminous
pages, I have altered the order of some paragraphs so as to bring
relevant matter together and have made a few minor textual changes.
The largest omissions relate to methods of manufacture and costs
in various parts of India; I have also excised Morice's curious but
irrelevant dissertation on Brick Tea, referred to on page 7o.
SOIL
V. Tea seems to require a somewhat rich, loamy soil, retentive of

moisture, but not damp; in fact a soil rather stiffer than is found the
most suitable for Coffee. The reason for this seems to be, that Tea is
intolerant of drought, and demands a soil which will at all times retain
sufficient moisture to supply its wants.
VI. In Ceylon, I know of no soil corresponding to the above; but
that said by Mr Shipp to be the best suited for Tea in Cachar, seems
to be not unlike that found on most of our mountain ranges, at a
suitable elevation, viz. 'A light, friable, filtry, reddish, ferruginous
clay, free from stones or slate, which prevents the tap-roots penetrating to a sufficient depth'.
VII. Virgin soil from old forest cannot perhaps be expected to be
so fertile as some of the alluvial deposits of Assam; but it must at any
rate be more productive than that planted on in the Himalayas;
According to Dr Jameson, Tea has never succeeded well in the limestone Districts; but of such there are not many in Ceylon. Neither is
there any chance of its answering on Pattena or Chena lands unless
manuring and irrigation can be both economically carried on.
That the nature of the soil influences the quality of the Tea
produced, seems to be generally admitted; but what are the causes,
or the nature of the effects so produced, no one seems to have taken
the trouble to ascertain. It is not, however, unreasonable to suppose
275

that a strong rich soil will produce the strongest, though not the most
delicate, Tea.
With the known fact of the Tea plant thriving on Ceylon's hills,
the conclusion seems justifiable that there is nothing in the soil to
prevent the successful cultivation of Tea.
CLIMATE
X. Ceylon does not in any part possess a climate similar to that of

China, Assam, or the Himalayas. The seasons are not so marked in
their variations of temperature; and this fact brings me to the question, so often asked, and so variously replied to, 'Does the Tea plant
absolutely require an annual period of rest for the due development
of a leaf both commercially valuable, and sufficient in quantity?'
We know that it gets such a wintering in China and in India.
Enquiry in Assam on this point elicited a considerable variety of
opinions; and it is there, at this moment, a matter of doubt, whether
the Tea plant really does cease growing during the comparatively dry
months from November to March; and consequently, whether at any
time the sap does completely stagnate. My own opinion is that what is
ordinarily experienced in Ceylon during January, February and
March is, combined with Tamil pruning, quite sufficient to produce
the flushes so essential for cheap picking.
XII. Dr Davy, in his work on Ceylon, in anticipating a great future
for the interior of Ceylon, says, 'It is of consequence to know, that by
ascending the mountains of the interior, according to the degree of
elevation, you may find the average temperature of every latitude
between Ceylon and England'.
In the instructions handed me, it is suggested for consideration
whether at lower elevations, with a hot moist atmosphere, inferior
quality of Tea might not be profitably produced. To this the answer
is that with a view to the London Market, low class Teas will not pay;
in them, no other producers can compete with the Chinese. All the
Indian Teas are brought for the purpose of mixing with low-class
China leaf, and if Ceylon is ever to become a Tea producing country,
the manufacture must be confined to the better kinds of black and
Green teas; but especially the former.
PROPAGATION
XL. It is essentially necessary that, in the first instance, the best

seed be procured from Assam of the hybrid variety, now generally
acknowledged to combine the good qualities of both the indigenous
276
THE MORICE REPORT

Assam and of the China plant. There being no local demand for seed
in that quarter at present, it can therefore be procured at a very
moderate cost.
Seed has, however, two peculiarities. First, that a portion (of the
most valuable character) is always bad; no test that can be applied
can ascertain this with certainty, nor can the defective seeds be
separated from sound. Second, it is very susceptible of injury in
transport, and unless despatched soon after being gathered, and
carefully packed in charcoal, or slightly damp earth, it almost certainly is destroyed.
Under these circumstances Ceylon planters, anxious to give Tea a
fair trial, may very naturally hesitate before incurring such possible
loss; and if this Report meets the approval of the Government, I
would respectfully suggest that seed be imported by their orders, and
distributed to such applicants as will undertake to cultivate it, in the
same manner as was adopted with Cinchona. If seed is imported as
suggested, not a day will require to be lost in putting it in the ground
after its arrival; as even a short time in a Custom House Store might
suffice to injure or destroy it.
XV. Tea can also be readily propagated from cuttings a particularly useful mode, if a superior description of plant is wanted to be
multiplied, as all seed is very precarious. The best plants are those
which have the most tender leaves when full grown, and the China
plant seems much more inclined to run into a hard ivy-like leaf than
the other two varieties.
Another mode of propagation, which I was told is practised in
China, is to strip the bark off one side of a piece of root, cut from the
plant, and bury this a few inches in the ground, when it immediately
throws out shoots from every eye this resembles the method of
breaking Bamboos followed by the Sinhalese.
CULTIVATION
XIV. This does not, in Assam and the Himalayas, bear the same
meaning altogether as in Ceylon, whether it is generally applied to
hoeing, or other modes of stirring up the soil to make the most of its
latent powers. In India, it simply means fighting with weeds. All the
Tea Districts except in the South of India are overrun with grasses,
having white creeping roots, which it is impossible to eradicate, and
which when divided send out shoots from every fresh joint. The
worst kind and the most troublesome, is called in Assam Òoloo' and
is neither more nor less than Ceylon 'IIlook'. In the rainy season, this
277

Springs fiercely up, quickly overtopping the Tea, if not cut down with
hoes or grass knives; and in the case of young fields thrown out of
cultivation during the late crisis, they were soon undistinguishable
from the surrounding grass land. Hoeing would be unnecessary but
for this and other weeds, and I was assured would not be resorted to,
were the land clean.
XVIII. There being no weed such as Òoloo grass' to contend with
in Ceylon, hoeing will be unnecessary.' Thus, with care from the
beginning, a Tea Plantation in Ceylon may start on more than equal
terms with one in Assam; a fact which will be made obvious when the
cost of production comes to be considered.
MANUFACTURE
XLII. There seems to be very many different methods of manufacturing Tea in China, but I believe many of them do not produce
what is demanded for London, a strong dark infusion, and a brown
leaf, which can be obtained only by fermentation. The model adopted
on the Government Gardens in the Himalayas, and imitated by
private Planters, although producing a Tea which finds a ready local
sale, had to be abandoned in favour of the fermenting process, when
the London Market came to be decided. It follows that if Ceylon is to
compete it can only be with an article made with the approval of
London Tea tasters and purchasers. There is, however, a considerable
extent of land now under Tea in this Island, and it would be very
satisfactory to know what quality can be produced under the hands of
a thoroughly experienced manipulator. I suggest that such a man be
procured from Assam by the month of January next. The services
of a first-class man could, I think, be obtained for perhaps 3 to
per month, and including travelling charges the whole cost of such a
tentative process need not exceed 50 to 6o.
LABOUR
XLIV. The only point remaining for notice, is the force of coolies
necessary for an acre of Tea in full bearing. This will partly depend
on whether the land is kept clean or not, from the commencement. In
Assam and the Himalayas, where there is a constant struggle with
grass, at least one cooly per acre during crop season is considered
necessary. From the system of imported labour in Assam, the full
1 Morice is self-contradictory about illuk, which does of course exist in Ceylon
and can be fairly virulent.
a This is obviously a reference to Green Tea, in which the process of fermentation
is omitted.
278
THE MORICE REPORT

complement has to be kept on all the year round and it was said to me
that during the plucking season, to do full justice not only to that
work but to the weeding, one man and a half per acre would be
necessary.
In Ceylon, with a plantation free of weeds and in full bearing, I
am inclined to think that during crop one hand per acre, including
everyone, might be the utmost required, and out of crop, a very small
force of women and children could do all the weeding and pruning
necessary. Tea in Ceylon would have the advantage of being in crop
when the majority of Coffee Estates were not, and thus labour might
be made available for both cultivations, without interfering with each
other.'
Should Tea ever be largely produced in this Island, it may be
found more economical to merely manufacture the Tea roughly on
the plantation, and leave the picking, sorting and packing to be done
in Colombo, as is now the practice in China. This would ease the
demands on the Estate labour and in the event of a sale, enable the
grower to obtain those quick returns which are so essential for
remunerative production.
COSTS
XLI. Tea can, with the exception of the possible cost of seed, be
planted as cheaply as coffee, and if kept free of weeds from the
beginning, the annual upkeep need be very little. Buildings need in
the first instance be of the very cheapest description, as Tea can be
manufactured in the simplest of buildings; and with the exception of
roasting pans and zinc lined storing boxes, no particular plan is
necessary. In this opportunity Tea has much advantage of Coffee, no
expensive stores or pulping machinery being required. In Assam, a
brick or iron roofed building is a rarity; on many of the best paying
properties I found the Tea still passed through all its stages, in
buildings which probably never cost 50 altogether. Indeed to a
stranger, it seemed as if cheapness in Bungalow and Stores was the
only economy which had ever been very generally practised.
I proceed to give an Estimate which, so far as extent goes, is not
likely to be very far from the mark. This shows in round figures, a
total cost of 30 per acre, to bring Tea to the end of the sixth year,
when it may be hoped to be in full bearing; and if in the last four
I Having left the question of 'wintering' in suspense in paragraph X, Morice here
seems definitely to assume that plucking in Ceylon would be seasonal. It does of
course continue virtually all the year round, though with variations according to
temperature and rainfall.
279

of these years respectively, 6o, 120, 180 and 240 lb., or in all 600 lb. of
good Tea per acre have been manufactured and have realised an
average net profit of LI 5 per year, it is clear that, exclusive of interest,
the actual cost per acre will have been more than covered.
THE SUMMING UP
XLV. Having now, to the best of my ability endeavoured to comply

with the instructions given me, it only remains for me to repeat that
in my humble opinion, there is every possibility of Tea being successfully grown in Ceylon, if only fairly tried with the best plants and
with the best system of manipulation. With quality and quantity, it
has I think, been shown that the cost of labour need not prevent a
most favourable result. Neither should the disasters which have lately
overtaken the Tea enterprise in North Eastern India, act otherwise
than as a warning against the too rapid extension of cultivation, and
the indulgence in visions of quickly disposing of a few thousand acres
(of perhaps only partially planted land) for m) per acre, to a limited
liability company.
Appendix II
THE BARING CORRESPONDENCE
Though it covers the whole span from just before the arrival of J. M.
Robertson in Ceylon in 1848 to the sale of the Baring Estates in 1891-4
the correspondence in the archives of Baring Brothers & Co. is a good
deal more copious for the early 'coffee period' than for the transition
to tea.
Nevertheless, it throws a useful light on the rather obscure subject
of the relationship between an agency house and its London backers,
and in particular on the sort of advice the latter were receiving during
the decade of crisis, 1875-85.
The relationship was complex, especially on the side of plantation
finance, since it covered three separate categories of estates those
(usually ten or fifteen in number) actually owned by Baring's; those
over which, on Robertson's advice, they had taken mortgages; and
those which were a purely Robertson speculation.
Broadly speaking, the picture is of Robertson & Co. wanting to
press on and Baring Bros. wishing to limit their liability. On II July
1859, for example, Robertson's take note of an instruction that they
are 'not to extend your engagements in Ceylon, that on the contrary
you wish them to be reduced gradually'. Yet only a few months before,
they had persuaded Baring's to let them bid for Gustave Odier's
Louisa Estate, which had cost him 1z,000 and over which Baring's
held a mortgage. They were apparently authorised to go to 6,000,
but at the auction on to March 1859 they obtained the estate for only
b,700, there being a 'prejudice against all high estates and particularly those of Dimbula'. Even so, a visiting Baring dismissed Louisa
as 'a bad bargain'. Time moved on, and by 1866 with 'a good deal of
forest cut down and the district more open and dryer', Robertson's
claimed that Louisa was 'placed too low at 5,000'. Various attempts
were made to sell the place and finally on 16 September 1876 came a
triumphant cable; 'Barings London. Sold Louisa twenty thousand
sterling'. This in the eighth year of Hemeleia vastatrix!
,Often London financiers like Baring's found that however much
they may have wished to reduce their liabilities, they had no real
alternative to extending them. A typical example, from the very
height of the coffee crisis, was Mr Thomas Viner's estates in Matale.
281

The unfortunate owner had 'absolutely no means beyond what was
necessary for his family, with rigid economy, and was therefore utterly
dependent on Baring's for carrying on the estates'. J. I. White, on
leave in England, wrote to the firm:
'As matters stand, I do not see any alternative to your assuming
possession of Mr Viner's estates. He writes to me urging me to recommend your continuing advances until the cinchona and cacao mature
for harvest and crop, but this will be attended with certain outlay but
uncertain result.'
Baring's evidently decided on a take-over, as Wiltshire, the principal
Viner estate, was in their ownership for years afterwards.
These are two instances, though differing in outcome, of the
unavoidably speculative background of estate finance in Ceylon.
Another was the prolonged efforts of Baring's to disengage themselves from the affairs of Baron de Delmar, who had been in difficulties at least two years before his death in 1858, of his widow who died
in x861, and of his daughter Mrs Cavendish (later the Comtesse de la
Rochefoucault). At one stage, even the Imperial House of France was
involved. In February 186o Baring's were informed by the Ministre
d'etat et de la Maison de l'Empereur (Napoleon III) of a matter
'essentiellement secret' that the Emperor had guaranteed the repayment of 200,000 francs lent by a Paris financier to Baron de Delmar.
The Minister understood that Baring's had a claim on the Baron's
properties situe dans les Indes and therefore perhaps . . .
An office memorandum attached to this letter noted that Baring's
did indeed have a claim totalling 42,000 and it would be some years
before this would be repaid. However, there were possibilities in a
second mortgage to follow their own 'but please do not say that this
course is recommended by us'. How the matter of the Emperor's
guarantee was settled we do not know, but a Zzo,000 claim by a Paris
financier called Cohen which entered the correspondence shortly
afterwards was doubtless linked with it.
Ten years later we find trustees appointed by the Court of Chancery coping with yet another aspect of the Delmar imbroglio a debt
of 50,000 to a bank in Amsterdam. The final phase of this intricate
affair is told in the following letter from J. M. Robertson to Baring
Bros. (zo August 1879). It also gives a vivid picture of conditions in
Ceylon towards the end of the coffee era:
'We see from recent English letters and newspapers that an incorrect
impression prevails at home as to the causes which led to the failure of
Messrs Price Boustead & Co., the involvement of the Ceylon Company
282

Limited, and other minor embarrassments, and it may interest you to
know how these have been brought about.
`Messrs Price Boustead & Co. many years ago became connected with
the Kandy firm of Byrde & Son, who owned a large number of Coffee
Estates in the older districts, of which they became Proprietors on
Messrs Byrde's failure some 10 years ago. Of the Estates a few are still
remunerative, others are being worked at a loss, and many at different
times have been abandoned. Of those which are still cultivated, few
could be realised except at very low prices, as the returns from old
Coffee have lately been irregular, and, in consequence of the attacks of
leaf disease, the cost of cultivation has so increased that the margin for
profit even on the old Estates is greatly reduced. Messrs Price Boustead
also came under large advances, apparently unsecured, to the local firm
of Rudd Brothers, by whose failure, three months ago, they lost Rs.
250,000. Further in 1874 or 1875 they lost Rs. 350,000 through the
failure of two English shopkeepers.
`Mr Boustead invested largely in the District of Morowakorle
[Morawak Korale] opened iz years ago, which, for Coffee, has proved a
complete failure. Some of the Estates are being replanted with Tea,
for which the soil and climate are said to be suitable. He purchased from
us in 1873 the Delta, Alnwick and Delmar Estates, till then owned by the
Countess Gaston de la Rochefoucault (Mrs Cavendish). The first as a
Coffee Estate has ceased to be remunerative (the last crop we shipped
was 9600 cwts.) but we understand the others have fully equalled
expectations. . . .
`The Ceylon Company have made some losses here, chiefly at the
outset, but their Ceylon business, though not always prudently conducted, has been fairly remunerative. On the other hand their Mauritius
investments (far exceeding in their Ceylon interest) now in course of
realisation, threaten to swallow up the greater part of the Shareholders'
capital. Here they own two of the best Estates in the Island, and much
of their other property is good, but their system of controlling the
working of the Estates from London is a bad one, and is responsible
for some of their losses. As a Coffee Company, however, they have been
fairly successful, and it is important that this should be understood, as
the fact of their deriving their style from this Island has led to a general
supposition that this was their chief field of operation and that their
losses were made in Coffee.
Òur neighbours Messrs George Wall have gone into liquidation.
Their embarrassment, though only now made public, is an affair of
long standing. It comes to light now in consequence of the refusal of the
Oriental Bank to carry them on further. They are deeply involved in old
Estates which have long been working unsatisfactorily, and the bulk
of their losses was made years ago.
283

Ìt is possible we have not yet seen the end of the failures, as much
unprofitable business has been done in Colombo during the last ten
years. There is, however, no reason to take a despondent view of the
future of the Coffee enterprise, legitimately conducted. Indeed with the
assistance of Cinchona, which our planters have taken in hand heartily,
we think the younger estates, now our chief stand-by, can be matte to
yield as profitable returns in the future as in the past. . . .
`The fall in the price of Coffee is no doubt serious, but in one way it,
and the tightness of our local money market, will have a good effect.
Expenditure for some years past has been steadily increasing, and so long
as planters were able to obtain money easily, it was impossible for us and
others who were alive to the evil to struggle against it successfully. Now
all see the necessity of using every effort to retrench, and we think much
ultimate good will result from the present distress.
Òur accounts from Ouvah are satisfactory. The Estates there have
blossomed freely, and as the weather continues favourable we think good
crops may be counted on. On this side prospects, as previously advised,
are not so good. . .
A supplementary letter signed by Henry Bois six weeks later
(7 October) provides a locus classicus for informed opinion about
coffee disease in 18791
`. . . The gross earnings of the firm during the past season were very
large, but in view of a rearrangement of the interests of the various
partners in the firm, it has been considered prudent to make large
reserves in connection with some doubtful accounts and these reduce the
net result to figures which are smaller than usual, the amount left for
division amongst the partners being Rs. 123,545.23. These figures are
not unsatisfactory in view of the considerable reserves to which I have
referred, a portion of which may eventually prove to be unnecessary.. .
`During the last 2 years great strides have been made in the planting
of cinchona, which now forms an important item in estate cultivation.
In this connection I may mention that on Mr W. D. Bosanquet's estates
alone we estimate that 3/4ths of a million of plants are now growing
and this number will be largely increased during the next planting
season. Although the results of this large development of a new product
to supplement the coffee will not be shown in an immediate increase of
revenue, the effect is to greatly enhance the value of your security and a
large revenue from this source may be looked for in the future. . . .
`Leaf disease, to which a large, and I think an undue proportion of the
difficulties which have existed of late has been attributed, appears to be
decreasing, if we may judge by the reports we receive from the various
districts. No doubt the average yield of coffee per acre has been materially reduced since the advent of this pest but it is not a new thing it
284

has existed for many years and the late, and to some extent existing,
financial difficulties in Ceylon are at least as much due to unsound
speculation in coffee estates, and the undue facilities given by one of the
leading Banks, as to leaf disease or any inherent unsoundness in the
coffee enterprise itself.'
Admittedly, what may seem to us like blind optimism was buttres-
sed by the very satisfactory profits made by Robertson & Co. right
up to the period of disaster. We know, for example, that for the five
years to the end of 186i profits averaged io,000 a year and this on a
relatively modest capital.'
In 1878 we hear of a profit of Rs. 186,237, 'which considering the
extreme shortness of the coffee crop is not unsatisfactory'. The Rs.
123,545 profit for 1879 referred to in the correspondence represented
about 12400 at the then rate of exchange. Then, of course, came
the phase of very heavy losses through the failure of the Oriental
Bank, but by 1886 much progress of tea-growing (over 17o acres on
Rajatalawa, for instance) was putting things to rights.
For 1891 we have an interesting financial picture of the twelve
estates which Baring Bros. then owned Bogahawatte, Oodewella,
Peradeniya, Rajatalawa, Sheen, Wiltshire, Le Vallon, Yoxford, Peacock Hill and Keenakelle, together with so per cent shares in Koslanda and Denegama. Expenditure in the season 1890-I was
32,362; the value of crop 40,360, and the profit 7,988. Le Vallon
alone was by then turning out 18o,000 lb. of tea, valued at 7,500.
Tea had saved the day, and when Baring Bros.' own affairs forced
them to dispose of their Ceylon interests, they did so at satisfactory
prices.
1 Some light is thrown on capital position by a letter from G. W. Christian
(at October 872): 'From the partnership deed the capital of the firm appears as
50,000, but the private balances of the partners have for many years made the
amount available to the business very much larger. A few years ago, the amount
employed by the firm was nearly xoo,000:
285
Appendix III
THE GRADING OF CEYLON TEA
Frequent mention has been made in the text of the various grades
into which Ceylon tea is divided. These grade names are an indication
of size or appearance of manufactured leaf and not of its quality, and as
E. L. Keegel has pointed out (Tea Manufacture in Ceylon, and ed.
1958, Tea Research Institute of Ceylon), 'there is a lack of uniformity
in the market grades today which makes it difficult to describe them
with any accuracy'.
Briefly, however, they are divided into two groups the Leaf grades
such as were chiefly made by the Ceylon pioneers, and the smaller
Broken grades which are in vogue today.
Leaf grades are usually divided into:
Orange Pekoe (O.P.)
Pekoe (Pek.)
Souchong (Sou.)
Broken grades are divided into:
Broken Orange Pekoe (B.O.P.)
Broken Pekoe (B.P.)
Broken Pekoe Souchong (B.P.S.)
Broken Orange Pekoe Fannings (B.O.P.F.)
Dust (D.)
The grades may be described as follows:
O.P. Long, thin, wiry leaves which sometimes contain tip.
The liquors are light or pale in colour.
Pek. The leaves of this grade are shorter and not so wiry as
O.P., but the liquors generally have more colour.
Sou. A bold and round leaf, with pale liquors.
B.O.P. This grade is one of the most sought after. It is much
smaller than any of the leaf grades and contains tip. The
liquors have good colour and strength.
B.P. Slightly larger than B.O.P., with rather less colour in
the cup; useful as a filler in a blend.
286
GRADING OF CEYLON TEA

B.P.S. A little larger than B.P. and in consequence lighter in
the cup, but also used as a filler.
B.O.P.F. This grade also is much sought after, especially in the
U.K., and fetches high prices. It is much smaller than
B.O.P. and its main virtues are quick brewing, with
good colour in the cup.
In addition there are the various 'Flowery' variants of the main
grades (e.g. F.O.P. and F.B.O.P.F.), the nature of which is described
on page 173.
Only a small quantity of the Leaf and Flowery grades is produced
in modern Ceylon. The former find their chief market in South
America and to a less degree in North Africa and a few European
countries; the latter are mainly popular in the Middle East, particularly Iran. Few of the Up-country estates make these grades at all their stable lines are B.O.P. and B.O.P.F. such as are so dominant
in the U.K., Australia and South Africa. The demand appears to be
for ever smaller and smaller leaf, and a great deal of cutting or milling
is resorted to today both in countries of origin and by the packers.
287
Appendix IV
STATISTICAL TABLES
TABLE I
(a) Area Planted with Tea
Year Acres Year Acres
1867 19 1881 13,000
1868 200 1882 22,000
1869 250 1883 32.000
Not recorded
1884 70,000
1871 /1
5885 IO2,000
1870
1872 260 1890 220,000

1873 280 I goo 384,000
1874 350 1910 386,000
1875 1,100 1920 404,000
1876 1,700 1930 487,000
1877 2,700 1940 552,000
1878 4,700 1950 567,000
1879 6,500 1960 582,000
1880 9,300 1965 594,000
(b) Area by Size of Holdings 1965

No. of Total Extent Percentages of
Holdings in Acres Total Acreage
Smallholdings (below '0
acres)
Estates so acres and above, but
below ioo acres
507,393 97,345 16.37

2,311 62,284 1048
Estates Ioo acres and above,

but below 500 acres 530 146,428 24.63

Estates of Soo acres and above 329 288,251
48'52
Total
110,563 594,308 loo.00

288
STATISTICAL TABLES
TABLE 2
(a) Production

Year
lb.
Year
lb.

1938
246,931,000
1962
467,049,000

195o
306,215,000
1963
484,571,000
196o
434,709,000 1964 481,739,000

1961
455,229,000
1965
503,174,000
Note: Earlier production figures are somewhat unreliable and do not differ
materially from the export figures given in Table 4.
(b) Production by Categories 1965
Acres
High-grown
215,827
Medium-grown
229,321
lb.
201,371,927
173,722,777
Low-grown
149,160
128,079,635
TABLE 3
Ceylon Internal Consumption

Year
Population
(estimated)'

5,666,900
'935

6,116,900
1940

195o
6,905,756

5960
9,866,520

1965
11,000,000
Consumption
(estimated)
Consumption
per head
lb.
lb.
8,707,000
I 1,638,000
1'53
1.90
14,500,000
2'10
33,384,000
3'40
34,304,279
3.1 I
1 These were non-census years.
289

TABLE 4
(a) Exports
Year
Quantity
lb.
1873
23
1874
492
1,438
1875
1876
Value
(Rs.)
58
1,900
2,402
1,907
1877
737
2,105
1878
19,607
3,457
20,900
1879
95,969
162,575
150,641
1882
348,157
697,288
591,825
1883
1,665,768
916,172
1884
2,392,973
1,435,784
1885
2,842,269
1887
4,372,722
7,849,888
13,834,057
1888
23,820,723
12,624,990
1889
34,345,852
17,859,840
1890
22,899,759
1910
45,799,519
149,264,603
186,925,117
53,735,257
77,327,010
1920
184,770,231
80,781,537
1930
243,107,474
235,739,000
182,038,000
1938
1950
298,098,585
751,650,630
1961
409,783,875
425,721,224
1,095,679,380
1962
451,632,955
1,147,923,887
1963
455,873,314
1,139,819,969
1964
455,273,314
494,456,088
1,140,871,907
1880
1881
1886
Igoo
1960
1965
290
85,229
322,993
5,102,427
8,300,434
172,420,857
1,113,967,564
1,209,522,256
Australia
17,950
Canada
18,114
(1910-11
only)
18,067
18,270
12,277 38,760 41,809 41,427
6,864
5,437
6,616
8,488 17,588 17,871 16,886
2,682
68o 12,290 23,823 43,257
4,220
9,838
9,307 13,951 14,894 16,363
3,936
10,468 17,172 26,422 31,094
2,740
9,333
6,687
Iraq
New Zealand
4,984
(1910- 1 i
only)
South Africa
United Arab Republic
(figures are for Egypt
up to 1945-51)
309
(1910-ii
only)
3,407 23,808 4,929 4,163
107,735
113,177
123,624
156,569
U.S.A.
3,875
10,543
15,579
16,368
22,690 32,453 40,748 46,701
U.S.S.R.
7,503
23,309
252
2,574
36 nil 356 11,118
United Kingdom
155,001
109,296 150,215 177,965
SalaVI, IVOLLSI,LITIS
(b) Exports by Principal Destinations - 3-Year Averages

(Earlier destinations are given on page 148)
(I 000 lb.)
1929-31
1919-21
1937-39
1899-1901 1909-11
1949-51 1959-61 1965

(c) Exports by Destinations exceeding 500,000 lb. 1965
Aden
Australia
Bahrein
Canada
Chile
China
Denmark
Ethiopia
6,219,783
41,427,182
964,050
16,886,373
1,905,069
10,126,563
819,453
1,220,579
France
1,649,532
3,041,079
Germany (Western)
Hong Kong
1,936,284
43,257,381
Iraq
13,302,097
Iran
5,008,037
Ireland
3,260,960
Italy
Japan
Jordan
Kuwait
4,847,393
1,015,202
4,708,051
Lebanon
Libya
Malaysia
Netherlands
New Zealand
Saudi Arabia
South Africa
1,373,354
8,527,222
1,517,518
10,473,542
16,362,736
7,182,072
31,093,514
4,162,763
Syria

United Arab Republic
4,155,026
United Kingdom 177,965,411
United States 46,700,907
11,117,583
U.S.S.R.
292
STATISTICAL TABLES
5
(a) Sales of Ceylon Tea by Auction
(I,000 lb.)
Year Colombo London
1938 113,044 118,700
1947 164,449
1950 177,331
1955 288,323 72,066
196o 333,729 80,482
1965 367,695 119,819
TABLE
(b) World Auction Sales 1965

(x,000 lb.)

367,695 Nairobi
Colombo
Calcutta 359,262 London
Cochin 107,130 Antwerp
Chittagong 54,154 Hamburg
17,212
357,876
2,502
866
6
Prices
(Average values on Colombo Auctions by categories)

1965
1960

Rs.
Rs.

Gross Net
Gross Net
High-grown 2'24 2'03 2I0 P93
Medium-grown 1'82 1'75 1'70 1.66
Low-grown P92 1.83 1'67 P64

I'83 P75
All Teas 2'01 i.88
TABLE
Note: Gross average auction price; Net average price to producers after
deduction of Sales Tax (see page 240).
TABLE 7
Revenue
(Tea's percentage contribution to the Export Revenue of Ceylon)

1938 65%
955 64%
1
1960
61%
1945 47%

1950 so%
1965 64%
293

Appendix V
ESTATES MENTIONED IN THE TEXT
NOTE: The names of Agency Houses have been abbreviated. A number of Tea Companyaitles have
also been shortened slightly. Estates which are now wholly or mainly devoted to crops other than
tea are marked thus
Name of
Estate
Planting
District
Modern Name
(if changed or
amalgamated)
Abbotsford Dimbula
Dessford
Abergeldie Dickoya Lower
Strathdon
Agars Land Balangoda

Agrawatte Dickoya Lower
Aislaby Badulla
Albion Dimbula
Alice Holt Nilambe
Allagolla Udapussellawa
Allakolla Knuckles
Alnwick Udapussellawa
Ancoombra Matale West
Atherfield Kelani Valley
Attampettia Badulla
Avon Haputale
Carolina Group
(q.v.)
Le Vallon
Group (q.v.)
Brookside
Group
Haputale
Beaconsfield Maskeliya
Springwood
Group (q.v.)
Alton Group
Belgravia Dimbula
Bearwell Group
Black Forest Pussellawa
Beaumont
Group
Kenilworth
Group
Barra Rakwana
Blackstone Ambagamuwa
Bogahawatte Dimbula
Rosita
Campden Morawak
Hill Korale
Enselwatte
Group
Aislaby Estates
Ceylon Provincial
Estates Co.
Harrisons & Crosfield

Geo. Steuart
Allagolla Tea Co.

Amarasuriya Estates
Scottish Tea &
Lands Co.
Meezan Estates
Don Pedrick Estates
Attampettia Estates
Scottish Tea and
Lands Co.
Bois Bros.
Amarasuriya Ltd,
Ceylon Tea Plantations Co.
Ceylon Tea Plant

ations & Geo.
Steuart
Rowevans Agencies &
Dimid Agencies
Geo. Steuart
Dimbula Valley
Tea Co.
Ceylon Proprietary
Tea Estates Co.
Tea Corporation
Panadura Tea &

Rubber Co.
294
Agents
Lunuva (Ceylon) Tea Harrison & Crosfield

& Rubber Estates
Scottish Ceylon
Leechman
Tea Co.
John, Keell,
D. C. Perera
Thompson, White
Rajawella Produce
Co.
J. Bell & Family
Mrs. R. Narayanaswami and others
S. Selladurai
Broughton Haputale
Bunyan Maskeliya
Calsay Dimbula
Cameron's Dimbula
Land
Owners
Mackwoods
Don Pedrick Estates
Gordon Frazer
Gordon Frazer
Geo. Steuart
Mackwoods
Ceylon Tea Plant
ations and Geo
Steuart
M. M. Salgado

Name of
Estate
Campion
Planting
District
Modern Name
(if changed or
amalgamated)
Dickoya
Galaha Ceylon Tea

Estates Co.
Namunakula Tea
Estate Co.
Carolina Tea Co.
United Planters Co.
Cannavarella Passara
Dickoya Lower
Maturata
Carolina
Charley
Valley
*Christy's
Land
Condegalla
Ramboda
*Cottagalla
Kadugannawa
Court
Lodge
Craigie Lea
Alma Group
Kurunegala
Nuwara Eliya
Dimbula
G. 13. S. Games
Labookellie
Group (q.v.)
Cottagalla &
Lower
Tambawitta
Park Group
(q.v.)
*Culloden
Kalutara
Cymru
Dimbula
Tangakelle
Cyprus
Rakwana
Dundonnel
Dalhousie
Dambatenne
Darnmeria
Debedde
Degalla
Maskeliya
Haputale
Passara
Badulla
Dumbara
Delmar
Udapussellawa
Delta
Denawaka
Pussellawa
Ratnapura
Denegama
Balangoda
Wewesse (q.v.)
Pallekelly
Group (q.v.)
*Dewalakande Kelani Valley

Deyanella
Kelebokka
Dickoya
Diyagama
Dickoya
Dimbula
Doombagastalawa
*Dunedin
Kotmale
*Eadella
Kurunegala
Elephant
Nook
Kelani Valley
Nuwara Eliya
Owners
Kallebokka
Mrs. H. V.
Ramiswera
Pedro (q.v.)
295
Galaha
Geo. Steuart
Mackwoods
Whittall Boustead
D. N. W.
Wiieyesuriya
H. V.
Ramiswera
Mrs.
Geo. Steuart
Anglo-Ceylon &
General Estates
Rosehaugh (Ceylon)
Rubber Co.
A. H. T. de Soyaa
& Co.
S. A. W. Wiiesinghe
Lipton
Estates Co. of Uva
Anglo-Ceylon &
General Estates
Delta Estate
Pelmadulla Valley
Tea & Rubber Co.
K. D. Wimalasekare
Estates
Stratheden Tea Co.
Diyagama East
& West
Kataboola
Group (q.v.)
Dewalakande
(q.v.)
Agents
Dickoya Tea Co.

New Dimbula Co.
Govt. of Ceylon
Bois Bros.
Rosehaugh
Ceylon Tea Plantations and Geo.
Steuart
Bosanquet & Skrine
Newton Perera
Lipton
Whittall Boustead
Bois Bros.
Bosanquet & Skrine
Shaw Wallace &
Hedges
K. D. Wimalasekare
Estates
Steuart
Carson. Cumberbatch
Geo. Steuart
Whittall Boustead
Ceylon State
Plantations Corp.

Name of Planting
District
Estate
Modern Name
(if changed or
amalgamated)
El Teb Passara
Epping Kalutara
Forest
Erin-Go- Nitre Cave
Bragh
Eton Pundaluoya
Ettrick Haputale West
Fairieland Hantane
Fairyland Nuwara Eliya
Fernlands Pundaluoya
Florence Kelani Valley
Forres Maskeliya
Galaha Hantane
Galbodde Rangalla
Gallebodde Dickoya Lower
Galloola Madulsima
Gampaha Udapussellawa
Gannoruwa Alagalla
Gartmore Maskeliya
Glasgow Dimbula
Glassaugh Dimbula
Glen Alpin Badulla
Gleneagles Dimbula
Glenloch Ramboda
Glenlyon Dimbula
Winchfield Park
Gonavy Hewaheta
Upper
Great Valley Hewaheta
Lower
Consolidated Estates
Co.
Panadura Tea &
Rubber Co.
None recorded 5966
Fernlands
(q.v.)
S. A. Narayansarny
Brampton
Group
Roseneath (now
abandoned)
Pedro (q.v.)
Uplands Tea
Estates Co.
N. M. M. Sherriff
Ceylon Proprietary
Tea Estates Co.
Galaha Ceylon Tea
Estates Co.
Duckwari Tea &
Duckwari
Rubber Estates
Group
Gallebodde Estates
Co.
Lunuva (Ceylon) Tea
& Rubber Estates
Estates Co. of Uva
Government Experimental Station
T. M. Soysa & Bros.
Glasgow Estate Co.
Ceylon Provincial
Estates
Ouvah Ceylon
Estates
Stratheden Tea Co.
Henfold
Suppiah Estates
Ceylon Tea PlantaWaverley
tions Co.
Gonamotava Haputale
Loolecondera
(q.v.)
Great Dimbula
Western
Guava Hill Kadugannawa
'Haloya Nilambe
296
Agents
Owners
General Ceylon
Rubber & Tea
Estates
Peacock & Nilambe
(Ceylon) Tea &
Rubber Estates
Great Western Tea
Co.
A. L. M. Jaleel &
others
Heirs of late Haji
N. H. Mohamed
& others
Geo. Steuart
H. M. Salgado
M. Casaim Lafir
Mercantile
Corporation
Whittall Boustead
B. K. Dabere
Geo. Steuart
Galaha
Aitken Spence
Mackwoods
Whittall Boustead
T. M. Soysa
Whittall Boustead
Geo. Steuart
Consolidated
Commercial
Carson Cumberbatch
Mackwoods
Steuart
Rowevana Agencies &
Dimid Agencies
Whittall Boustead
Geo. Steuart
M. H. Mahmood
H, M. Z, Abdeen

Name of
Estate
Hanguranketa
Harangalla
Planting
District
Modern Name
(if changed or
amalgamated)
Hewaheta
Upper
Kotmale
Hardenhuish Dickoya Lower

Harrow
Pundaluoya
Hattanwella Matale East
Hauteville
Dimbula
Havilland
Kegalla
Hazelwood
Heathstock
Hermitage
Nuwara Eliya
Passara
Nilambe
Henfold
Hindagala
Dimbula
Badulla
Holmwood
Dimbula
Hope
Horagalla
Hewaheta
Upper
Dolosbage
Hunasgeria
Hunaagiriya
Hyndford
Ambagamuwa
Illagolla
*Indurana
Rangalls
Kelani Valley
Ion
Balangoda
Kabaragalla
Maturata
Kadawella
Dickoya Lower
Kandaloya
Yakdessa
Kandanuwara
Kandapolla
Matale East
Kataboola
Kotmale
Keenakelle
Badulla
Kelburne
Haputale
Kellie
Dolosbage
Nuwara Eliya
Brae Group
Owners
Agents
R. E. S. de Soysa
(Jm.)
Rosehaugh (Ceylon)
Tea Co.
None recorded 1966
Dickoya Tea Co.
K. Arunchalam
Pillai & others
Galaha Ceylon Tea
Estates
D. W. A. Jayasinghe
& others
Carson Cumberbatch
Stratheden Tea Co.

Ouvah Ceylon
Estates
H. W. Amarasuriya
Estates
Eastern Produce &
Estates Co.
Carson Cumberbatch
Colombo
Commercial
Amarasuriya Ltd.
Rosehaugh
Geo. Steuart
Galaha
Pedro (q.v.)
el Teb (q.v.)
Le Vallon
Group (q.v.)
Holmwood &
Thomley
Harrison & Crosfield
Nagastenne
Group (q.v.)
Consolidated
Commercial Co.
Hyndford &
(Hyndford " A ")
Dr. J. I.
Hyndford "A"
Fernando-Pulle
see Galbodde
Mrs. N. S. C. Perera
& others
'uncultivated'.
1952
P. W. Rodrigo
Estates
Carolina Group
(q.v.)
Ceylon & Indian
Planters' Assocn.
Warriapolla Estates
Park Group
(q.v.)
Co.
Rajawella Produce
Co.
B. A. Nadesan & S.
Ponnuswamy
A. P. S. T.
Ponnambalam
Pillai & others
297
Consolidated
Commercial
Leechman
Mackwoods
Somerville
Bosanquet & Skrine

Meezan Estates
Geo. Steuart
Gordon Frazer
R. A. Nadesan
Forbes & Walker

Name of
Estate
Planting
District
Modern Name
(if changed or
amalgamated)
Owners
Kelvin
Dolosbage
Kelvin "A" and

"C"
Kensington
Matale East
Gammadua
Group
Kirklees
Knaveamire
Udapussellawa
Kegalla
"A". Dr. V. S.
Jayakody and
A. M. P. Vincent
Silva
"C". Mr. & Mrs.
R. L. de Silva
SP. R. M. Letchumanan Chettiar
and L. Kannappa
Chettiar
New Dimbula Co.
Ceylon Government
*Kondesalle
Dumbara
Ceylon Government
Koslanda
Haputale
Kotiyagalla
Kottagodde
Badulla
PR. Sinnakaruppan
& Mrs. V. S.
Maniam
Standard Tea Co.
Labookellie Ramboda
Layamastotte Haputale
Le Vallon
Nilambe
Lochiel
Dimbula
Logan
Logie
Kelani Valley
Dimbula
Loolecondera
Lorne
Louisa
Hewaheta
Lower
Dimbula
Dimbula
Lovegrove
Lover's
Leap
Mackenzie's
Land
Maddakellie
Rangalla
Nuwara Eliya
Mahagastotte
Mahapittiya
Mariawatte
Maryland
Mastnawatte
Mattakelle
*Mayfair
Meddecombra
Spring Valley
(q.v.)
Dambatenne
Group (q.v.)
see Cameron's
Land
Penrith Group
Knuckles
see Abbotsford
Great Western
(q.v.)
see Galbodde
Pedro Group
(q.v.)
not traced after
1874
Hagalla
Nuwara Eliya
Pedro (q.v.)
Haputale
Kadugannawa
Badulla
Broughton (q.v.)
Dimbula
Dickoya Lower
Dimbula
Kegalla
Dimbula
'uncultivated'
Agents
"A". Somerville
Leechman
Whittall Boustead
State Plantations
Corp.
Agric. Officer. Prod.
& Farm Management, Peradeniya.
PR. Sinnakaruppan
Geo. Steuart
Esutali & Co.
Carson Cumberbatch
Rajawella Produce
Co.
Gordon Frazer
Tillyrie Estates Co.

Ceylon Provincial
Estates Co.
Anglo-Ceylon &
General Estates
Tillyrie Estates
Geo. Steuart
Gallebodde Estates
Co.
Mackwood
Bois Bros.
None recorded 1966
1912
Gallebodde (q.v.
298
United Planters' Co.

Land Commissioner
Eastern Produce &
Estates Co.
Whittall Bi ustead
Govt. Age] t, Kegalla
Harrisons Crosfield

Name of
Estate
Planting
District
Modern Name
(if changed or
amalgamated)
Millakande Kalutara
Miyanawita Kelani Valley
Monara- Haputale
kande
Mooloya Hewaheta
Upper
Moon Plains Nuwara Eliya
Moray Maakeliya
Mousakellie Maakeliya
Nagastenne Dolosbage
Nahakettia Haputale
Nahavilla Badulla
Naranghena Hewaheta
Upper
Naseby Nuwara Eliya
New Forest Nilambe
New Peacock Pussellawa
Nilambe Nilambe
North Pundaluoya
Pundaluoya
Nugawella Pussellawa
Pedro (q.v.)
Dambatenne
(q.v.)
Loolecondera
(q.v.)
Pedro (q.v.)
Le Vallon
Group (q.v.)
Mahavilla
Oakfield Haputale
Oetumbe Badulla
Oliphant Nuwara Eliya
Oodewella Hantane
Oodoowerre Badulla
Ovoca Maakeliya
Pallekelly Durnbara
Demodera
Group
Bunyan (q.v.)
Palmgarden Ratnapura
Panilkande Morawak
Korale
Park Nuwara Eliya
Owners
Rosehaugh (Ceylon)
Tea Co.
Miyanawita Estates
Co.
S. Periasamy
Consolidated
Commercial
Whittall Boustead
Mooloya Estates
Consolidated
Commercial
Uplands Tea
Estates Co.
Nyanza Tea Co.
Whittall Boustead
Pelawatte Kalutara
State
Plantation
Pen-y-Lan Doloabage
N. C. Pillai
Associated Holdings
English & Scottish

Joint C.W.S.
Mrs. P. M. A.
Raiapaksa
Demodera Tea Co.
English & Scottish

Joint C.W.S.
Mrs. P. M. A.
Rajapaksa
Whittall Boustead

Raj awella Produce
Co.
Oodoowerre Tea Co.
Whittall Boustead
Gordon Frazer
Raiawella Produce
Co.
Saffragam Rubber
& Tea Co.
D. J. Ranaweera
Gordon Frazer
Tea Corporation
299
Mackwoods
Whittall Boustead
Peacock & Nilambe

(Ceylon) Tea &
Rubber Estates
N. C. Pillai
Associated Holdings
Nuwara Eliya Tea

Estates Co.
Ceylon Government
Pedro Nuwara Eliya
Forbes & Walker
Nahavilla Estates Co. Geo. Steuart
Nuwara Eliya Tea

Estates Co.
A. R. Suwaris
Peacock Hill Pussellawa
Agents
Whittall Boustead
Carson Cumberbatch
Geo. Steuart
Leechman
Shaw Wallace &
Hedges
Leechman
Ceylon State
Plantations Corpn.
Gordon Frazer

Name of
Estate
Planting
District
Peradeniya, Hantane
Old
*Perth Kalutara
Modern Name
(if changed or
amalgamated)
Not recorded
after 1962
Pingarawa Badulla
Pitakande Matale East
Poojagode Ramboda
Frotoft Group
Poonagalla Haputale
Pooprassie Pussellawa
Portswood Nuwara Eliya
Radella Dimbula
Rahatungoda Hewaheta
Upper
Rajatalawa Nilambe
Rajawella Dumbara
Ratnatenne Kclebokka
Ridipane Badulla
Rockhill Badulla
Park Group
(q.v.)
Le Vallon (q.v.)
Pallekelly
Group (q.v.)
Allakolla
(Knuckles
District) (q.v.)
Glen Alpin
roup 1,14. V .1
Rookwood Hewaheta
Upper
Rothschild Pussellawa
St. Andrews Dimbula
Chrystler's
Farm Group
St. Clair Dimbula

St. Coombs Dimbula
St. Joachim Ratnapura
St. Rum- Dolosbage
bolds
Sapulma- Kelani Valley
kande
Nagastenne
Group (q.v.)
Seaforth Dolosbage
(formerly in
Yakdessa)
*Sembawatte Kelani Valley
Nagastenne
Group (q.v.)
Ingoya
Owners
Panawatte Tea &

Rubber Estates
Hunuwella Tea &
Rubber Co.
Pitakande Tea Co.
Uplands Tea Estates
Co.
Poonagalla Valley
Ceylon Co.
Supramaniam Tea
Estates Co.
Ceylon Proprietary
Tea Estates Co.
Rahatungoda Tea
Co.
Agents
Whittall Botistead
Carson Cumberbatch
Consolidated
Commercial
Whittall Boustead
Carson Cumberbatch
Governing Director,
Supramaniam Tea
Estates
Geo. Steuart
Geo. Steuart
S. M. V. Mahalingam & others

Co.
Eastern Produce &
Estates Co.
Highland Tea Co.
Geo. Steuart
Ryans Estates
Tea Research
Institute
Tea Research
Institute
Geo. Steuart
Tea Research
Institute
Tea Research
Institute
Lunuva (Ceylon)
Tea and Rubber
Estates

Steuart

Leechman

Name of
Estate
Planting
District
Sheen
Sherwood
Pundaluoya
Balangoda
Sinnapitiya
Kadugannawa
Sogama
Pussellawa
Somerset
Dimbula
Spring
Valley
Springwood
Stair
Stellenberg
Badulla
Rakwana
Dimbula
Pussellawa
Stirling
Strathspey
Talankande
Dimbula
Maskeliya
Dimbula
Tasmania
Dimbula
Tientsin
Dickoya
Trafalgar
Dickoya
Tullibody
Nuwara Eliya
Udaveria
Unugalla
Haputale West
Badulla
Kadugannawa
Upper
Sinnapitiya
Passara
Ury
Viner's Hill Matale West
Waloya
Waltrim
Wattegodde
Ambagamuwa
Hewaheta
Lower
Dimbula
Dimbula
Wavendon
Weliganga
Wewesse
Ramboda
Wayvelhena
Willie
Badulla
Morawak
Korale
Matale West
Dolosbage
Wiltshire
Windsor
Forest
Badulla
Modern Name
(if changed or
amalgamated)
Upper Sinnapitiya (q.v.)
Owners
Agents
Pundaluoya Tea Co.

Mrs. B. V. D. W.
Abeyawardena
Geo. Steuart
Eastern Produce &

Estates Co.
Anglo-Ceylon &
General Estates
Ryans Estates
Strathspey Tea Co.
Middleton Tea
Estates
Mayfield (Dimbula)
Tea Co.
Tientsin Tea Estate
Co.
Bois Bros.

Steuart
Spring Valley Ceylon Consolidated
Commercial
Estates
Gordon Frazer
Tea Corporation
see Glenlyon
Mayfield
Group
Carolina Group
(q.v.)
Park Group
(q.v.)
Rookatenne
Group
Not recorded
after 1876
Hyndford (q.v.)
Loolecondera
Group (q.v.)
see Nugawella
see Oetumbe
Galamuduna
Group
301
Brooke Bond Ceylon

Lunuva (Ceylon)
Tea & Rubber
Estates
V. Karmegam
Geo. Steuart
Geo. Steuart
Bosanquet & Skrine
Consolidated
Commercial
Carson Cumberbatch
Brooke Bond
V. Karmegam
Nahavella Estates Co. Geo. Steuart
Standard Tea Co.

Consolidated
Estates Co.
Wavendon Estate
Geo. Steuart
Geo. Steuart
Raiawella Produce
Co.
Gordon Frazer
D. M. Ratnayake
Estates
None recorded 1966
Panadura Tea &
Rubber
Shaw Wallace &

Hedges
Wavendon Estate
M. M. Salgado
& Son

Name of
Estate
Planting
District
WormsBadulla
Yapame
Badulla
Yoxford
Dimbula
Yuillefield
Dickoya
Madulsima
Modern Name
(if changed or
amalgamated)
Owners
Agents
Keenakelle
(q.v.)
Lt.-Col. V. A. It
Isham & others
Holyrood
South Wanarajah
Tea Estates
302

Steuart
Bois Bros.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Every aspect of tea, historical and technical and covering all countries, is
comprised in W. H. Ukers, All About Tea (New York, Tea & Coffee
Trade Journal, 2 vols. 1935). Apart from this all-embracing work, the
following selected bibliography has been arranged broadly by subjects,
though overlapping is inevitable, especially in the transition from coffee
planting to tea. Works still in print at the time of compilation are marked
thus *.
CEYLON HISTORICAL AND GENERAL
Some works which have particular relevance to the plantation industry.
CAPPER, John. Old Ceylon Sketches of Ceylon in the Olden Time (London,
W. B. Whittingham, 1878).
CAVE, H. W. The Book of Ceylon (London, Cassell, 1908).
FERGUSON, John. Ceylon in 1883 (London, Sampson Low, 1883. Further
eds. under various titles and imprints up to 1903).
GREGORY, Sir Richard. Autobiography (London, John Murray, 1894).
HAMILTON, V. H. and FASSON, S. M. Scenes in Ceylon (London, Chapman
& Hall, 1881).
*HULUGALLE, H. A. J. British Governors of Ceylon (Colombo, Associated
Newspapers of Ceylon, 1963).
*HULUGALLE, H. A. J. The Life and Times of D. R. Wijewardene (Colombo,
Associated Newspapers of Ceylon, 196o).
*KEEBLE, W. T. Ceylon Beaten Track (Colombo, Associated Newspapers
of Ceylon, 5th ed. '953).
LEWIS, J. Penry. A List of Inscriptions on Tombstones and Monuments in
Ceylon of Historical or Local Interest with an Obituary of People
Uncommemorated (Colombo, Government Record Office, 1913).
*LuDowvii, E. F. C. The Modern History of Ceylon (London, Weidenfeld
& Nicholson, 1966).
*MILLS, Lennox A. Ceylon under British Rule (London, Frank Cass, 1964).
*PAREmAN, S. A. Ceylon (London, Ernest Benn, 1964).
SKINNER, Major Thomas. Fifty Years in Ceylon (London, W. H. Allen,
1891).
SUCKLING, H. J. A General Description of Ceylon (London, Chapman &
Hall, a VOIS., 1871).
.
TENNENT, Sir J. Emerson. Ceylon An Account of the Island, Physical,
Historical and Topographical (London, Longman Green, Longman &
Roberts, 5th ed. 1860).
303

*TRESIDDER, Argus John. Ceylon (New York, Van Nostrand, 1960).
*WILLIAms, Harry. Ceylon, Pearl of the East (London, Robert Hale, 2nd
ed. 1963).
WRIGHT, Arnold. zoth Century Impressions of Ceylon (London, Lloyd's
Publishing Co., 1907).
PLANTERS AND PLANTING IN CEYLON (COFFEE)
BOYD, William. Autobiography of a Periya Durai (Colombo, Ferguson,
1889).
FERGUSON, John. Uva Revisited (Colombo, reprint from Ceylon Observer,
Ferguson, i886).
HULL, E. C. P. Coffee Planting in South India and Ceylon (London
E. & F. N. Spon, 1877).
JENKINS, Richard Wade. Ceylon in the '5os and '8os (Colombo, Ferguson,
1886).
MILLIE, P. D. Thirty Years Ago (Colombo, Ferguson, 1878).
RUTHERFORD, H. J. Ceylon's Coffee Days Recalled (Colombo, Times of
Ceylon, 1937).
A. The Coffee Planter of Ceylon (Guernsey, Mackenzie

Son & Le Patourel, 1866).
SKEEN, William. Mountain Life and Coffee Cultivation in Ceylon (Poems)
(London, Stanford, 1868).
VANDEN DRIESEN, I. H. History of Coffee Culture in Ceylon (Ceylon
Historical Journal, July, October 1953).
SABONADIERE, W.
PLANTERS AND PLANTING IN CEYLON (TEA)

(Colombo, Ferguson, 1885).
ANON. The Tea Planters' Association of Ceylon 1854-1954 (Colombo,
ANON. Ceylon and her Planting Enterprise
Times of Ceylon, 1954).
CAVE, H. W. Golden Tips (London, Sampson, Low Marston, 190o).

DAVIDSON, Sir Leybourne. Some Early Memories (Reprint from
Aberdeen Press and Journal, 1933).
John. Pioneers of the Planting Enterprise in Ceylon (Colombo,
FERGUSON,
Ferguson, 3 vols., 1894-1900).

Frederick. Sixty-Four Years in Ceylon (Colombo Apothecaries
Co., 1926).
VILLIERS, Sir Thomas L. Some Pioneers of the Tea Industry (Colombo
Apothecaries Co., 1951).
WRIGHT, Col. T. Y. Ceylon in My Time 1889-1949 (Colombo Apothecaries Co., 1951).
BREMER, J. Mounsteven. Memoirs of a Ceylon Planter's Life (London,
Rivingtons, 1930).
LEWIS,
3)F
BIBLIOGRAPHY
TEA-GROWING AND MANUFACTURE
The following are selected from the numerous technical works, past and
current, which deal with tea planting and manufacture, especially from
the Ceylon point of view.
*ANON. How Ceylon Tea is Grown and Marketed (London, Ceylon Tea
Centre, New ed., 1966).
ANON. The Tea Planter's Vade Mecum (Calcutta, Office of Indian Tea
Gazette, 1885).
ANON. Tea Cyclopaedia (collated from Indian Tea Gazette, Calcutta,
1887).
1 ARMSTRONG, C. S. Tea Cultivation (Colombo, Ferguson, 1887).
BAMBER, L. Kelway. Text-Book on the Chemistry & Agriculture of Tea
(Calcutta, Law Publishing Press, 1893).
*EDEN, T. Tea (London, Longmans Green, 1958).
ELLIOTT, C. E. and WHITEHEAD, W. j. Tea Production in Ceylon (Colombo.
Times of Ceylon, and ed. 1931).
*HARLER, C. R. The Culture and Marketing of Tea (London, Oxford
University Press, 3rd. ed. 1964).
*HARLER, C. R. Tea-Growing (London, Oxford University Press, 1966).
*JOHNSON, R. J. Johnson's Note-Book for Tea Planters (Colombo, R. J.
Johnson & Co., 4th ed. 1961).
RUTHERFORD, H. K. Ceylon Tea Planter's Note-Book (Colombo, Times
of Ceylon, 9th ed. 1931).
COHEN STUART, C. P. A Basis for Tea Selection (Indonesia, Buitenzorg
Research Station, 1919).
*TEA RESEARCH INSTITUTE MONOGRAPHS
1. T. Eden, Work of the Agricultural Chemistry Department of the

Institute (1949).
z.
3.
4.
5.
C. H. Gadd, Common Diseases of Tea (1949)

James Lamb, Organization of Tea Research Work in Ceylon (1954).
E. L. Keegel, Tea Manufacture in Ceylon (1958).
E. L. Keegel and Others, One Day Course in Tea Manufacture
(1963).
TEA TRADE IN CEYLON AND OVERSEAS

ANON. The House of Dodwell 1858-1958 (London, Dodwell & Co., 1958).
ANON. James Finlay & Co. 1750-195o (Glasgow, Jackson, 195i).
' Reprints of addresses by C. S. Armstrong to various Planters' Associations
between 1883 and 1885 are in the library of the Ceylon Association, London.
U
305

ANON. One Hundred Years as East India Merchants 1844-1943 (London,
'garrisons & Crosfield, 1943).
LIPTON, Sir Thomas. Leaves from the Lipton Logs (London, Hutchinson,
1931).
NICHOLAS, S. E. N. Commercial Ceylon (Colombo, Times of Ceylon,
1 933)
*RAMACHANDRAN,
N. Foreign Plantation Investment in Ceylon 1889-1958

(Central Bank of Ceylon, 1963).
REDFERN, Percy. The Story of the C.W.S. (Manchester, Co-operative
Wholesale Society, 1913).
STAVEACRE, F. W. F. Tea and Tea Dealing (London, Pitman, and ed.
1933).
STEUART, James. Recollections Personal and Official 1817-1866 (Colombo,
Times of Ceylon, 1935).
VILLIERS, Sir Thomas. Mercantile Lore (Colombo, Ceylon Observer, 1940).
WAUGH, Alec. The Lipton Story (London, Cassell, 1954
WICKIZER, V. D. Tea Under International Regulation (Stanford, University,
1944).
TRAVELLERS' TALES
CARPENTER, Edward. From Adam's Peak to Elephanta (London, Swan
Sonnenschein, 1892).
CLUTTERBUCK, W. J. About Ceylon and Borneo (London, Longmans
Green, 189 1 ).
GORDON CUMMING, C. F. Two Happy Years in Ceylon (London, Chatto
& Windus, 2 VOIS. 1893).
FERGUSON, R. H. Cycling in the Planting Districts of Ceylon (Colombo,
Ceylon Observer, 1899).
HAECKEL, Ernest. A Visit to Ceylon (English ed. London, Kegan Paul,
Trench, 2 vols., 1883).
HINCHING BROOK, Viscount. Diary in India and Ceylon (Nassau, W. S.
Johnson, 1879).
UKERS, W. H. A Trip to Ceylon (New York, Tea eg Coffee Trade Journal,
1925).
THE HISTORY OF TEA

*GRIFFITHS, Sir Percival. A History of the Indian Tea Industry (London,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, to be published in 1967).
*Huxuy, Gervas. Talking of Tea (London, Thames & Hudson, 1956).
*LANCASTER, Osbert. The Story of Tea (London, Ceylon Tea Centre,
New ed. 1964).
*SCOTT, J. M. The Tea Story (London, Heinemann, 1964).
306
BIBLIOGRAPHY
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
*ANON. The Ceylon Tea Story (London, Ceylon Tea Centre, 1966).
*SKIBULITS, Anne. All in a Cup of Tea (London, Ceylon Tea Centre,
reprinted 1966).
*WILSON, Christine and WipsoivIA, W. R. A Tea Plantation in Ceylon
(London, Oxford University Press, 1958).
OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS
Fool) AND AGRICULTURE ORGANISATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS. Tea
Trends and Prospects (Rome, x960).
GOVERNMENT OF CEYLON. Arthur Morice, Report of a Visit to the Tea
Districts of India (Colombo, 1867).
GOVERNMENT OF CEYLON. Ceylon Delegation to the Tea Districts of North
India (Colombo, Department of Agriculture, 1925).
GOVERNMENT OF CEYLON. Report of the Kandyan Peasant Commission
(Colombo, 1951).
GOVERNMENT OF CEYLON. Economic Development of Ceylon, report of a
Mission organised by the International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development (Colombo, 1952).
GOVERNMENT OF CEYLON. M. D. H. Jayawardene, Economic & Social
Development of Ceylon a Survey, 1926-54 (Colombo, Ministry of
Finance, 1955).
GOVERNMENT OF CEYLON. Thirty Years of Trade Statistics of Ceylon
(Colombo, Department of Commerce, 1955).
GOVERNMENT OF CEYLON. Agricultural Plan, 1st Report of the Ministry
Planning Committee (Colombo, Department of Agriculture and
Food, 1958).
GOVERNMENT OF CEYLON. Agricultural Development Proposals 1966-1970
(prepared by Ministry of Agriculture & Food, published by Ministry
of Planning and Economic Affairs, 1966).
DIRECTORIES, ANNUAL REPORTS,
PERIODICALS, ETC.
Bulletin of Statistics (London, International Tea Committee, annually,
with monthly supplements).
Ceylon Trade Journal (Colombo, Government of Ceylon, monthly).
Ceylon Year Book (Colombo, Government of Ceylon, annually).
Department of Agriculture, Administrative Reports (Government of
Ceylon, annually).
Tea Controller, Administrative Reports (Government of Ceylon, annually).
307

Ferguson's Ceylon Directory (Colombo, Associated Newspapers of Ceylon,
1863 onwards. The Directory was preceded by various Almanacs

and Commonplace Books going back to the pioneer days).
Handbook of Rupee Companies (Colombo Brokers' Association, annually).
Manual of Tea-producing Companies (London, de Zoete and Gorton,
loose-leaf).
Royal Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya, Administrative Reports (c. 1840
onwards).
Annual Reports and periodical Bulletins of the following (with date of

first issue):
The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (1839).
The Planters' Association of Ceylon (1854).
The Ceylon Association in London (1888).
The Low Country Products Association (1908).
The Ceylon Planters' Society (1937).
The Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board (1933).
The International Tea Committee (1935).
Tea Quarterly (Tea Research Institute of Ceylon, 1928 onwards).
Tropical Agriculturist, The. Edited by John Ferguson, 1881-1905; subsequently issued as journal of the Ceylon Agricultural Society 19061921; now organ of the Department of Agriculture (Government of
Ceylon, quarterly).
P.A. Review (Tea Planters' Association of Ceylon, bi-monthly since
1934).
Some daily, weekly and monthly periodicals which contain Ceylon tea
news include: in Ceylon, the numerous publications of the Times of Ceylon
and Associated Newspapers of Ceylon from the pioneer period onwards (see
Chapter 12); in the United Kingdom, The Tea & Rubber Mail, (weekly),
incorporated since 1962 m The Investor's Guardian, The Grocer and The
Grocer's Gazette (both weekly), World Crops (monthly), New Commonwealth (monthly) and the trade bulletins and house magazines of many tea
companies; in the U.S.A., The Tea El Coffee Trade journal and The Spice
Mill (both monthly).
Periodicals issued by the overseas offices of the Ceylon Tea Propaganda
Board are Tea Leaf (London, monthly), Tea Times (Sydney, Australia,
occasional), Tea Times of Africa (Johannesburg, South Africa, monthly).
Extinct periodicals include: Planting Gazette (Kandy, Planters' Association of Ceylon, 1913-21), and Produce Markets Review (London). The
latter was begun as Joseph Travers & Son's Weekly Circular in 1859 and
continued as Produce Markets Review from 1866 to 1935, when it became
Travers' Circular again. It ceased publication in 1961.
308
INDEX
Names of estates in italics.
Abbotsford, 95, 194
Abergeldie, 150
Acland & Boyd, 62, 143
Acland, George, 143
Acland, Lawford, 138
Aden, 259
Aerial ropeways, 1/8, 154, Pl. 14a
Affleck & Co., 12
Africa, East, tea production, 253
Agars Land, 149
Agency Houses, control and staffing,
21; history, 129-45; in U.K., 147
Agrawatte, 120
Air-conditioning (factories), 251
Aislaby, 25/
Aitken, Spence & Co., 157 and note
Aitken, W. H., 116
Albion, 85
Alexander, E. B., 231 note
Alice Holt, los
Allagolla, 84
Allakolla, 156
Alravick, 283
Alston, G. H. and J. B., 136
Alston, Scott & Co., 136
Amarasuriya family, 107; Thomas, 191
Amsterdam Tea Assocn., 226, 23o
Ancoombra, 61, 63
Anderson, T. C., 173
Anderson, William, 132
Anglo-Ceylon & General Estates, 58,
78
Anti-Tea Duty League, 211
Arbuthnot Agencies, 147 note
Arbuthnot, Sir John, 3z
Arbuthnot, Latham & Co., 131, 147
Argentina, tea boom, 253
Armitage Bros., is
Armitage, D. L. and John, 54
Armstrong, C. Spearman, 125
Armstrong, J., 90
Assam, see Indian Tea
Atherfield, 15o
Attampettia, i26
Atwell, John, 90
Auctions, Colombo, 148-52; first sale,
1 49; build-up of, 239-40, PI. 21b;
London, early history, 16o; entry of
Ceylon tea, 161 et seq.; 'Golden
Tips', 173-5, Pl. 278.; Melbourne, 73
Mstralia, tea-growing, 56; auctions, 73;
Ceylon exports to, x8o; exhibitions,
Melbourne, 193-4, 255, Sydney, 1 97;
promotion, 228; consumption, 255;
Ceylon Tea Centres, 264, Pl. 23c;
Tea Council, 267

Avon, 105
Badulla, tot; coffee-growing in, 107
Badulla District, 18
Baker's Farm, 56
Balangoda District, 19
Bandaranaike, S. W. R. D. and Mrs,
243
Bank of Ceylon, stops payment, 33
Bank of Ceylon (1938), 191
Barber roller, 123
Baring Bros. & Co., relations with
Hudson, Chandler & Co., 135; with
J. M. Robertson & Co., 134-5, 142,
281; with Delmar family, 282-3;
estates, 281-2, 285
Barnes, Sir Edward, Governor, 29, 3o,
13o
Barnes, R. L. 228
Barra, tea experiments on, 55, 95,
12 3-4
Bartleet & Co., 151
Bartleet, Wilton, 15i
Bartlin, A., 53
Bayley, Capt., 120
Beaconsfield, 54
Begg, Kenneth S., 199
Belgium, Brussels Exhibition, 199;
promotion, 266
Belgravia, io5
Bell, J. L., r3a
Bentinck, Lord William, 3o, 44-5
Berkeley, Rev. M. J., 82
Bibby Line, 134
Bird (or Byrde) family: Lt.-Col. Henry
Bird and George Bird, 29-30; Lt.-Col.
H. C. Byrde, 30-1, 1 33, 1 40, 195;
plaque to George, 66; H. Byrde, 177,
181
Bisset family, 61 and note, 96;
Bissett, Miss Annie, 112
Black Forest, 31, 41,133, 140
Blacklaw, Hugh and James, 61
Blackstone, Pl. 12
Blechynden, Richard, 210
Bogahawatte, 285
Bohringer, Ch. A., 203
Bonner, C. E., 78
Bois Bros. & Co., 136
Bois family: Henry, 135, 284; Percy,
136; Sir Stanley, 136, zo9
Bosanquet & Co. (later Bosanquet &
Skrine), 140, 1 55
309
INDEX
Bosanquet, Carter & Co., 142
Bosanquet family, 105; R. A., 14o;
W. D., 141, 284
Boustead Bros., 14o
Boustead family, 31; John and John
Melvill, 139; J. M.'s estates, 283
Bowden Smith, W., 1 34
Boyd, George Hay, 143
Boyd, William, his Memoirs of a Perya
Dorai quoted, 34
Branson, W., 85
Brazil, tea-growing in, 56
Bremer, Mountsteven, 172, 205
Brooke Bond (Ceylon), 20, 155-6, 158
Broome, C. E., 82
Broughton, 91
Brown, Alexander, 68, 177-8
Brown, John, tzt-2
Bruce, C. A. and Robert, 45
Buchanan, Dalziel, 140
Buchanan, P. R., 209 note
Bulking, damage from, 165-6
Bungalows, primitive, 35-6, 64, Pls. 2,
3a
Bunyan, 153, 17o
Burnett & Reid, Messrs, 63
Bushells Pty. Ltd., 156
Butler, Samuel, 5 43
Byrde, see Bird
Byrde & Son, 283
Caddick, Helen, diary quoted, x o2-3,
125
Calcutta Exhibition, 193-4
Calsay, 167
Camellia sinensis, see Tea Plant
Cameron family, 105
Cameron, Roy, 58
Cameron, William, visits Taylor, 73;
career, 117-18; pruning system, 117,
Pl. 7a; on improvisation, 123,
Pl. 13a; controversy with C. Shand,
124
Cameron's Land, soy
Campbell, Rivers & Co., 136
Campbell, S. J., 158
Campden Hill, 105
Campion, 156 note
Canada, promotion 228; consumption,
256; Tea Council, 262
Canavorella, 92
Capper, John, his Old Ceylon quoted
on jungle-clearing, 33-4, on planters'
quarters, 36, on changes in the Fort,
40; with Acland & Boyd, 143; as
Exhibition Commissioner, 194-5,
198; H. H. and Frank, 194
Carey family, 99; L. St. George, 14
Carey, Strachan & Co., 142
Carolina, 120-1; KAW mark, 120, 167
Carr, Sir W. 0., 32

Carruthers, J. B., 219
Carson & Co. (now Carson, Cumberbatch), 134
Carson, G. B., 90
Carter, H. F., 190
Cave, W. H. his Golden Tips quoted,
to
Central Province, 107, 236
Central Province Tea Co., 146
Cess, Propaganda, early history, 198,
207; objections to, 210- It; abolished,
2 x 1; revived (voluntary), 224-5,
(statutory), 226; and other Cesses,
239 note
Ceylon, topography and climate, 15,
16, 25; in World Wars, 213-15, 233234; internal tea campaign, 228-9,
269; independent, 234, 238; food
needs, 25o; tea consumption, 252
Ceylon Agricultural Co., 155
Ceylon & Eastern Agency, 1 47
Ceylon & Oriental Co., 146
Ceylon Association, London, early
history, 583-7; as prosecutor, 17,3-1;
in tea promotion, 17z, 201, 2I0-1I,
225
Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, 28,
186, 191
Ceylon Co., pioneer estates, 71, 79, 94,
194; as seed importers, 115; 'tea
curing' factory, 120; history, 137-9,
147, 283; in London market, 163,
167
Ceylon Directory, 196
Ceylon Estate Agents' Assocn., 187
Ceylon Estate Employers' Fed., 244
Ceylon Estates Proprietary Assocn.,
187, 189-90
Ceylon Holdings, 159
Ceylon League, 178
Ceylon Observer, 195
Ceylon Planters' American Tea Co., zo8
Ceylon Planters' Rifle Corps, 213
Ceylon Planters' Society, 188, 272 note
Ceylon Tea Centres, U.K., t61, 193,
264-5; Pl. 24; Australia, 264-5,
Pl. 23c; Denmark, 265, P1. 23b;
Italy, 6eylon, U.S.A., 265
Ceylon Tea, characteristics, 263;
grading, 286-7
Ceylon Tea Co., 204-5
Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board, early
history 226-3o; modern organisation,
z6 t -9
Ceylonisation, estate staff, 21, 271;
Colombo trade, 21, 272; Associations
and Boards, 272
Ceytea, see Instant Tea
Chambers, Sir Theodore, 228
Charley Valley, 1o8
310
INDEX
Charlton, Lt. A., 45
Chenery, Dr. E. M., 221
'Chetties', 144
Chicago World's Fair, 174, 199, 207
Chilaw District, 236
Childerstone, W. J., 38 note
China, as Ceylon market, 256 note
China jat, see Tea Plant
China Tea, origins, 44; decline in U.K.,
169; Ceylon imports, 179; promotion,
212; production and exports, 252;
in U.S.S.R., 256-7
Chrisp, 49 and note
Christian, G. W., 135, 285 note
Christie's Land, 105
Cinchona, history in Ceylon, 88-93;
Hakgalla as nursery, 89-91; grown
by Taylor, 65-6, 90-,; profits from,
284; Pl. rb
Cinnamon, history in Ceylon, 26-8
Clifford, Sir Hugh, Governor, 236
Clones, see Vegetative Propagation
Coast Agency, see Tamils, Immigrant
Coffee-growing, as predecessor of tea,
29; origins and progress, 29-33;
Ceylonese, 106-7
Coffee plant, as temple flower, 29;
furniture from, 88 and note
Coffee Rust (Hemileia vastatrix),
history, 8o-1, 83; arrival in Ceylon,
81-2; 'cures', 83-4; effects on output,
85, 284-5, and on smallholders, 107;
'Ode to a Fungus', 86
Coffee trade, financial crisis, 98-9
Cohen Stuart, C. P., his Basis for Tea
Selection quoted, 47 note
Colombo, tea trade's position in, 2o;
changes in 'Fort', 40, Pls. 30, 31;
coffee era, 39-40; harbour extensions,
157; as tea port, 158-9; jetty kiosk,
203-5, 229, 269, Fig. 5
Colombo Commercial Co., 122, I28,
141-2
Colombo Tea Traders' Assocn., 150, 191

Colonial and Indian Exhibition, 51,
197, 199-200
Colonial Tea Co., 171
Companies, tea, 99, 145-6
Condegalla, tea experiments, 53, 71, 73,
79, 95, 138; in London market, 763
Conraed, C. C., 156
Consolidated Commercial Agencies,
142 note
Consolidated Tea & Lands Co., 144
Coode, Sir John, 157
Coombe family, los; R. G., 219
Coorey, Clarence, 269
Corbet, R. J., 178
Cottagalla, 137
Cotton family, 105
Court Lodge, 23
Courthorpe, Bosanquet & Co., 141

Courthorpe, W. F., 141
Craigie Lea, 92
Cranston, Stuart, 175
Crewe, Marquess of, all
Crofts-Bolster, Mrs, 'or note
Cromar, C., 63 note
Crown Lands, alienation of, 3r-2
Cruwll, H. C., 67 note
C.T.C. process, 251
Culloden, 59 note, 167
Cumberbatch & Co., 134
Cumberbatch, Harry, 134
Curzon, Marquess, 21o; quoted 216
Cymru, 105, Pl. 13
Cyprus, sso
Dalhousie, 56
Dambatenne, 153-4, P1. rib
Dammeria, 705
Dando, Malcolm, 268
Darley, Butler & Co., 143
Darley, E. J., 143, 1 95
Davidson & Co., 121, 125
Davidson, Sir Leybourne, his Some
Early Memories quoted, 59 note
Davies, H. H., 203
Deane, G. F., 78
Debedde, 107
Degalla, 38
Delmar, 283
Delmar, Baron de, and family, /33,
282-3
Delmege, Reid (now Delmege, Forsyth) & Co., 157 and note
Delta, 133
de Mel, family, 107
de Mel, Thomas, 229
Denautalea, 269
Denegama, 285
Denmark, Ceylon tea in, 26o; Tea
Council, 267; Ceylon Tea Centre,
P1. 23b
de Silva, K. M., his Social Policy and
Missionary Organisations, 42 note
de Soysa family, 29, 1o6-8; C. H., 1o8
Devonport, Lord, 214
Dewalakande, 198
Deyanella, 95
Dias family, 107
Dick, G. A., 90-I
Dick-Lauder, J. E. A., 125
Dickoya, 152 note
Dickoya District, 18
Dickson, Anderson & Co., /34, 147
Dickson, Tatham & Co., 1 34
Dickson, Thomas, 134
Dimbula District, z8, ro5; early tea in,
54-5
Dimbula Valley Tea Co., 146
3"
INDEX
Dipluck, Frank, 153
Diyagama, 125
Doombagastalawa, zoo
Dow, Leslie, 227
Downall, R. B., 91, 153, 177; Memorial
Fund, 177
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, his De Profundis quoted, too
Duff, G. S., 138
Duke of Argyll, s.s., x61, Pl. 22a
Dulling, Wykeham, 49 note
Duncan, Anderson & Co., 77
Duncan, Symons & Co., 77
Dundas, J. L., 65
Dunedin, tic), iz8, 150, 167, 198
Duties, see Export, Import
Eadella, 154
Eastern Produce & Estates Co., 139,
147
Eastern Produce (Holding) Ltd., 147
East and West India Co., 166
Eden, Dr T., 221
Eduljee, Cowasjee, 107
Egypt, see United Arab Republic
Elephant Nook, 23
Elephants, working, tot, Pl. 15
Elevational zones, 16
Elgin, Earl of, 18o, 2I1
Elizabeth II, H.M. Queen, P1. 24
Elliott, Dr Christopher, 195
Elliott, C. E., and Whitehead, W. J.,
their Tea Production in Ceylon
quoted, 217
Elphinstone family, to5, 134; Sir
G. H. D., 199, P1. 9
El Teb, to6
Empire Marketing Board, 227
Empire of India and Ceylon Exhibition,
199
Empire Tea Bureau, 193
Empire Tea Growers' Campaign, 226228
English & Scottish Joint C.W.S., 154-5,
170
Epping Forest, 105
Erin-go-Bragh, 105
Eton, 105
Enrich, 156
Europe, as tea market, 259-6o;
promotion in, z66
Export duties, Ceylon, 239 and note
Exports, growth of Ceylon, 148, 254-60;
quotas, 240 and note; licencing,
246 note
F.A.O., Fertiliser Project, 249; price
estimates, 251 note; Tea Trends
and Prospects quoted, 253; Nuwara
Eliya Conference, 254
Factories, Ceylon type, 118-19;

primitive, 119, Pls. 50, I la, 12;
central, 120-1; 'bought leaf', 241
and note; modem needs, 250-1,
Pls. 1 tb, 13b; air-conditioning, 251
Fairhurst, J. R., too
Fairieland, 67, 106, 176
Fairyland, 23, 95
Ferguson family: A. M., early life, 194,
as exhibition commissioner, 193-4,
as planter, 194-5, as journalist, 195-6,
P1. 9; John, 195-6, his Uva Revisited
quoted, 8i-2, 101-2, his Ceylon in
1,9o3 quoted, too; A. M. junr.,
Donald, R. H., William, William
junr., 195; C. B. and Memorials of
the Ferguson Family, 195 note
Fernlands, 69
Fertilisers, see Manuring
Figg, Sir Clifford, 136, 228, 231 note;
W. H., 136
Finlay, Campbell & Co., 142
Finlay, James & Co., 121, 144
Florence, 95
Food, Ministry of (British), 214
Food production, 25o and note
Forbes, James, xst
Forbes & Walke
r Ltd., 150-x, Pl. 19a
Fordoun School, 6o
Formosa, tea-growing, 56; exports, 253
Forres, 56
Forsythe, J. A. 86 note
Forsythe, William, 147, 567; his
Memoirs quoted, 86, 99, x 17, 119,
128
'Four Fine Ceylon Teas', 266
Fowlie, Richmond & Co., x51
France, tea growing in, 56; Paris
exhibitions, 99-201; Ceylon tea in,
260; promotion, 266, Pl. 23a
Fragmentation of estates, 241
Francis Joseph, Austrian Emperor, 201
Fraser, Joseph, 127-8, 147, 217
Frater, A. T., 123
Frazer, Gordon, 140
Frederick, Dowager Empress, 201
Gadd, Dr C. H., 22I, 223

Galaha Co. and Group, 142, 156 and
note
Galbodde, 95, z 66 note
Galle, 156-7; new works, 157 note; in
1957 emergency, 158
Gallebodde, 86, 137, z66 and note, 167,
174
Galloola, 81-2, 102
Gampaha, 90
Gannoruwa, 30- I , 219
Garstin, Rev. N., 3z
31z
INDEX
Gartmore, 172-3
Gavin, John, 65, /43, 181
Geddes, A. T., 92
General Ceylon Tea Co., 146
Gepp, Rev. E. F., 50-2
Germany, tea for army, zoz; promotion,
203; consumption, 259-60; Tea
Council, 262
Glasgow, Tos
Glasgow Exhibition, 198-9
Glassaugh, 105
Glen Alpin, 86, 101-2, 122
Gleneagles, 105
Glenie, Archdeacon, 32 and note
Glenloch, 32
Glenlyon, 105
Godfrey, Raymond, too
Gonamotava, 90
Gonavy, 58
Gordon, Sir Arthur Hamilton, Governor, 98, 101-2, 112
Gordon, G. J., 45-6
Gordon, Capt. Hamilton, to6
Gordon Cumming, Miss C. F., her
Two Happy Years in Ceylon quoted,
34, 84-5
Gordon, Frazer & Co., 14o
Gourley, F. E. B., 228
Gow Wilson & Stanton & Co., 151,
16o, 163, 167, 173
Gow, Patrick, /51
Grading, 125, 165, 286-7
Graepel, Hugh, 203
Graham, Sir Robert, 216 note
Great Exhibition (1851), 198
Great Valley, 72
Great Western, 96 note
Green Tea Bonus, 208-10
Gregory, Sir William, Governor, 67,
77, 92, 186, Pl. 9; Lady, 67
Greig, Miss May, 77 note
Grieg, A., 55
Griffith, Asst.-Surgeon, 46
Griffiths, Sir Percival, his History of
Indian Tea Industry quoted, 48, 209
note, 212
Grigson family: Thomas S. and Edward
S., 132; J. B. W., 151
Grinlinton, Sir John, 120, 199, 207
Guava Hill, 137
Gunn, Dr D. L., 221
Gwyn, -, 105
Hadden family: James Taylor's agreement with Messrs G. & J. A., 59;
in London and Ceylon, 62
Haddon, James A., & Co., 62 and note,
147
Haeckel, Ernest, his A Visit to Ceylon
quoted, 69 and note, 103-4 and note
Haelsson & Lyon, 27o

Hagenbeck, J., 203
Hakgalla Botanic Gardens, tea-growing
67 and note, 7o; as cinchona
nursery, 89-91
Halliley, G. F., 126
Haloya, 143
Hamilton, John, 184
Hamilton, V. H., and Fasson, S. M.,
their Scenes in Ceylon quoted, 104,
Pls. 2, 3a
Hanguranketa, 29
Harangalla, Pl. 15
Hardenhuish ('Harluish'), 167-8
Harding, E. G., 71
Harler, Dr C. R., his Culture and
Marketing of Tea quoted, on tea
jots, 46-7, on Blister Blight, 223
Harmoniums 103 and note
Harper, Alexander, 140
Harrisons & Crosfield, 144-5
Harrison, D. G. B., 65-6, 68, 7o note,
181
Harrow, 505
Hattanwella, 198
Hauteville, 156 note
Havilland, 175
Hazelwood, 95, 120
Heath & Co., 152, 158
Heathstock, 106
Hebtulabhoy & Co., 152
Hemileia vastatrix, see Coffee Rust
Hermitage, 95, ,o6
Hewaheta District, 96
Higson, E., 171
Hindagala, P1. 7b
Hoffmann,
64
Holland, see Netherlands
Holmwood, 103
Hooker, Sir William and Sir Joseph, 89
Hope, 79, 95, 121, 163
Hopewell-Hunugalla, 138
Hopwood, H., 268
Horagalla, 95; nursery on, 55, 116
Hornitnan, F. G., 161, 172-3
Horsfall, J., 219
Hospitals, see Medical Services
Howard, John Eliot, 90
How Ceylon Tea is Grown est Marketed,
23 note
Hudson, Chandler & Co., 3o, 1 35
Hudson, Frank, 3o, 135
Hudson, R. P., 229
Hull, E. C. P., his Coffee Planting
quoted, 29, 35, 110, 126
Hulugalle, H. A. J., his Life and Times
of D. R. Wijewardene quoted, 195
Hunasgeria, 132
Hunasgiriya District, 19
Hunter family: Arthur, 68; Charles,
96 note
313

Hutchison & Co., 164
Huxley, Gervas, 227-9
Hyndford, I31
INDEX
Illagolla, 95
Import Duties, into U.K., 164, 210-11;
into Ceylon, 179-8o
India, Ceylon co-operation with, zoo,
217 note; Ceylon tea missions to,
68-7o, z19-20; withdrawal from
I.T.M.E.B., 261
Indian tea, early history, 44-6; in
London auctions, 16o, 169; Ceylon
imports, 179-80; internal consumption, 252; promotion, 267; Tea
Centres, 267
Indian Tea Assocn., 206, 211
Indian Tea Cess Committee, 226, 23o
Indonesia, production and exports,
252-3
Indurana, 117
Instant tea, 269-7o
Institute of Planting, 272 note
International Tea Committee, 226-7,
231-2
International Tea Market Expansion
Board, 226, 230-1; in World War II,
234; 1952 withdrawals, 261; as
Ceylon agency, 261, 262 and note
Ion, site of, 38 note
Iran, as importer and tea-grower, 259
Iraq, consumption, 259; purchasing
system, 259; promotion, z66
Irish Republic, Ceylon tea in, 26o;
Dublin Tea Fair, 262; Tea Council
and Centre, 267 note
Irvine, James, 53, 107
Italy, tea for Queen of, 201; Ceylon
tea in, 26o; promotion, 265 and note
Iyasamy, driver on Loolecondera, 57,
72
Jafferjee Bros., 152
Jamieson, George I., 172
Japan, early tea-growing, 56; exports,
253
Yat, see Tea Plant
Java, early tea-growing, 67 note; see
also Indonesia
Jeejeebhoy, Bennajee, 107
Jenkins, W. J., 53, 71, 73, 79, 96
Joachim, Dr A. W. R., 221, 224, 270
John, E., & Co., 151-2
John family: George, Edward,
Reginald, x51-2
John, Keell, Thompson, White & Co.,
151
Jolly, Capt. Keith, 106, 140, 176 and
note, 177-8, 181
Jungle-clearing, 33-5; Pls. 3a, b

Jumeaux, John and Louis, 54
Kabaragalla, 149
Kadawella, Izo
Kalutara district, 18, 49, 236
Kandaloya, 166-7
Kandanuwara, 61
Kandap olla, 120, 202
Kandy, as P.A. headquarters, 181
Kataboola, 95
Kearley & Tonge, 171
Keegel, E. L., 221, 286
Keell & Waldock, 151
Keenakelle, 138, 285
Kees, L. E., 159
Kegalla District, 19, 236
Keir, Dundas & Co., 65, 77-8, 140, x81
Kelani Valley District, 18- x 9
Kelburne, 56
Kelebokka District, 19, 96
Kellie, 175
Kelly, L., 177
Kelvin, 42
Kensington, 105
Kenya, 227, 251
Killon, T., 155
Kilvert's Diaries quoted, 102, 108
Kingdon Ward, F., 45
Kirklees, go
Knavesmire, 244
Knuckles Range, 19; 'Bricks', 37-8
Kondesalle, 143
Koslanda, 285
Kotelawala, Sir John, 243
Kotiyagalla, 244
Kottagodde, 53, 102
Kuwait, 259
Labookellie, 53
Lamb, J., 221
Lampard, Arthur, 144; A. S., 226
Lampard, Crosfield & Co., 144, 2o6
Larkin & Co., 208
Lascelles, Sir Francis, zoz
Laurencekirk, 6o-2
Law, J. R. K., 124
Layamastotte, 153
Leake, W. Martin, part-owner of
Loolecondera, 65; on origins of L.
tea and cinchona, 65-6, 7o; as
planters' leader, 65, 68, 18x; London
agent, 183; Secretary of Ceylon
Assocn., 65, 186; Pl. ga
Lebanon, 259
Lee Hedges & Co., 139
Lee, W. D., 139
Leechman & Co., 120, 141
314
INDEX
Leechman family: G. B., W. C., &
Christopher, 141
Legislative Council, representation on,
177-8, 187 and note
Lethbridge, Sir Roper, M.P., 184
Le Mallon, 285
Lewis & Co., 161 note
Lewis, Frederick, his Sixty-four Years
in Ceylon quoted, 38 note, 117-19
Lewis, J. Penry, his List of Inscriptions
on Tombstones quoted, 61, 114
Libya, 258
Lindsay, Col. M., 32
Lion symbol, 264
Lipton, Sir Thomas, Bt., origins, 153;
purchase of estates, 153; influence on
Ceylon, 154; as distributor, 154, 170,
175; subsidised in U.S.A., 208;
personality, 153-4; his Leaves from
the Lipton Logs, 153 note
Lipton Ltd., 2o, 152
Liverpool Exhibition, x 99
Llewellyn, -, tea pioneer, 54
Lochiel, 105
Logan, 198
Logie, 105
Loolecondera, landscape, 18, 58; extent
and yield of tea on, 58, 74-5; No. 7
Field, 58 and note, Pl. 6; pruning,
73; manuring, 127; 'tea house' and
machinery, 72-3, PI. ro; tea sold in
Kandy, 73-4, in London, 73-4, 161,
166-8; later ownership, 77-8; as
cinchona estate, 90-1
Loos, C. A., 221, 223
Lorne, 105
Louisa, 105, 2.8t
Lovegrove, 95
Lover's Leap, 23, 76 note
Low Country Products Assocn., 590-/
Lyons, J., & Co., 172
MacCarogher, R., 105
McCarthy, Sir Charles, Governor, 178
MacGregor & Co., 77
Machinery, 72, 122-5; see also C.T.C.,
Rotorvane, Withering
Mackenzie, E. Turing, 265
Mackenzie, Hugh, 199
Mackenzie, J. J., 64
Mackenzie, William, 204, 208-10
Mackenzie's Land, 105
Mackie, Copland, 2.55
Mackwood & Co., 136-7
Mackwood family, 63; William, F. and
. Abel, 136-7
MacLennan, Hugh, 42
McNicol, A., 90-1
Maddakellie, 137
Madulsima District, i8, 81
Mahagastotte, 23, 56 note

Mahapittia, 9
Mahaweliganga river, 19, 122
Malaria, control of, 189-90
Manning, Sir William, Governor,
225 note
Manuring, 127-8, 249
Margarine Union, 270
Mariawatte, 31, T17; pruning on, 73;
factory, 124; analysis of yields, 127;
in London auctions, 167; and Tea
Fund, 198
Marshall & Co., 121, 124
Markham, Clement, 89
Maryland, 102
Maskeliya District, 56
Mastnawatte, 137
Matale District, 19; Planters' Assocn.,
z,6
Mathewson, A. G., 158
Mattakelle, Pl. 6
Mayfair, 105
Mazawattee Ceylon Tea Co., 170,
173-4
Medical Services, 43, 112-13, 190
Meddecombra, 95, 138
Megginson, Wharram, izo
Mendis, N. S. 0., 137
Mennell, R. 0., & Co., 161
Merchandise Marks Acts, prosecutions,
170-I
Millakande, 249
Millie, P. D., his Thirty Years Ago
quoted, 36, 38; as tea-grower, 54 and
note
Mills, Lennox A., his Ceylon Under
British Rule quoted, 28, 85, 93
Milne, R. S. M., 62.
Milne, A. G., 78
Mincing Lane, 16o; see also Auctions
Mitchell, J., 56
Mitchell, Sir William, zoo
Miyanawita, 251
Moir, Peter, 61
Monboddo, estate and house, 6o, 62-3
Monboddo, Lord, 63
Monarakande, 91, 153
Moneragalla District, 112
Mooloya, 68, 244
Moon Plains, 23
`Moormen% 144
Mooyart, 50-1
Morawak Korale District, 19, 283
Moray, 56
Morford, Kenneth, 244
Morice, Arthur, 24 note; Mission to
Assam, 68-70, 79, 275-80
Morrice, George, 76-7 and note, 107
Morris, D., 71
Moss Park, 6o, 62-3 and note, Pl. sb
Mousakellie, 153
335
INDEX
Muir, Sir John, 206, 209 and note
Murray, J. McCombie, 103 note
Murugiah, M. V., 36 note
Nagastenne, 55, x16, 155
Nahakettia, 175
Nahavilla, 107
Napoleon III, Emperor of the French,
282
Naranghena, 58, 63, 78
Naseby, 23, 52
Natal, see South Africa
Nationalisation, 238
Negombo District, 18
Nehru, Jawaharlal, 243-4
Neintner, J., 69 and note
Netherlands, 26o, 266
New Forest, 95
New Peacock, 32
Newton, G. K., 244
New Zealand, Dunedin Exhibition,
199; promotion, 2.03; consumption,
2.55; Tea Council, 267
Nicholson, H. Scobie, 189
Nilambe, 139
Nilambe District, 32
Noble, -, 71
Normansell, H. F., 5o
Norris, Dr R. V., 221
North, Hon. Frederick, Governor, 27
North Punduluoya, 54
Nugawella, x55
Nuwara Eliya District, z 8; grouping of
estates, 23; experimental tea-planting,
50-z; as 'Tea District', 96; P.A.
meetings, 181; F.A.O. Conference,
254
Oakfield, 153
Oetumbe, 102
Oliphant, Sir A., so-I
Oliphant, 95
Oodewella, 285
Oodoowerre, 149
Oriental Bank Corp., 31, 98, 138-9,
285
Oriental Estates Co., 78
Ouvah Ceylon Estates, 105, 142
Ovoca, 153
Ownership of estates, analysed, as,
145-6; Ceylonese, 271
Paget, Hon. Sir Edward, Governor,
13o
Paget, Thomas, 170
Pakeman, S. A., his Ceylon quoted, 238
Pakistan, 261
Pallakelly, 31, 95
Palmgarden Group, 22 4
Panilkande, 154
Park Group, 23
Parry, Hugh, 168
Passara District, 18
Paterson, Hubert, 58 note, 84
'P.D.' (Perla dorai), explained, 23 note
Peacock & Nilambe (Ceylon) Tea &
Rubber Estates, 14o
Peacock Hill, 285; Pl. ta
Pedro, 23, 56 note, 95, 120
Peek, Winch & Co., 161, 203
Peiris, J. L. D., 251
Peiris, Sir James, 191
Pelawatte, 241
Pen-y-Lan, 54
Peradeniya, Old, 285
Peradeniya, Royal Botanic Gardens,
first tea sowing, 50-1; seed on offer,
55, 67; remains of nursery, 7o;
cinchona era, 8g
Perth, I2I
Petch, T., 220
Philip, A., 177
Pieria family, 107
Piggott, Robert, 170
Pingarawa, 142, Pl. 27
Pitakande, x28
Planters' Assocn. of Ceylon, concern
for workers, 42-3; early officials,
176-7, 181; objectives and campaigns,
177-9; 'pressure group' for tea, 179180; Kandy and Colombo headquarters, 181-2 and note; London
representation, 183-4; Proprietors'
Committee, 187; Agency Section,
187; Centenary Volume quoted, 41,
79, 109, 112, 176 et seq.
Planters' Assocns., local, I81-2
Planters, recruitment of, 21, 36, 59 and
note; responsibilities, 22-3; daily life
and recreations, 35-38, 102-4, 113114; training, 272 and note
Planting Districts, 182, map at end
Plucking, hand and mechanical, 245-6,
Pls. 4a, b, 6a
Poojagode, 95
Poonagalla, ray
Pooprassie, 153
Population problem, 236-7
Portswood, z3
Power, E. Rawdon, 183 and note
Poya Days, 1 5o note
Price, Boustead & Co., 139-40, 282-3
Prices, London, x68-9; Ceylon's
problem, 251-2
Pride, George, 59, 63-5; Thom, 65
Prince of Wales, Albert Edward, 67,
157; Edward, 22.5 note
Prinsep, William, 46
Pritchett, F. T., 174
3i6
INDEX
Produce Markets Review, editorial, 165

Production, Ceylon, 234, 248-9
Promotion, Ceylon, early history, 172,
193-212; Tea Syndicate Fund, 197;
Ceylon Tea Fund, 198; Thirty
Committee, 156, 181, 198 et seq.;
exhibitions, 199; suspension of, 212;
efforts to revive, 224-5; `Lampard
Plan', 225-6; Campaign resumed,
226-31; after World War II, 261-9
see also Cess, Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board, International Tea
Market Expansion Board.
'Prompt', the, 185
Pruning, 'Cameron system', tt6-17,
P1. 7a
Pundaluoya Co., 146
Pussellawa District, 32, 36, 98-9
Radella, 55
Rahatungoda, 95
Railways, pressure for, 179; freight
rates, 179
Rajatalawa, 285
Rajawella, 32, 96, 122
Rakwana District, 19, 99
Ramachandran, N., his Foreign
Plantations Investment quoted,
145 note
Ramboda District, 18, 36
Ratnapura District, 19
Ratnatenne, 156
Rayner, R. W., on Coffee Rust, 8o-3
Redfern, Percy, his Story of the C.W.S.
quoted, 155
Regulation, voluntary, 217; statutory,
231; revival discussed, 254
Reid, Donald, 82
Renton, J. H., 199, 206
Replanting, see Subsidies, Vegetative
Propagation
Research, scientific, 218-20; soil
analysis, 218; at Gannoruwa, 219;
see also Tea Research Institute
Rettie family, to5; Wilfred, 118
Revolt in the Temple quoted, z36
Richards, A. V., 222 note
Richards, Rev. James, 49
Ridgeway, Sir West, Governor, tog,
177 note, 2It
Ridgways Ltd., t6i, 17o
Ridipane, 114
Ringletaube, Rev. Mr, 49
Roads, standard of, 179
Roberts, F. A., 21/
Robertson, Bois & Co., 14.7
Robertson, J. M., & Co., x34-5, 281-5
Robertson, J. Murray, 135, 282; J. M.,
junr., 142
Robinson, J. D., iso and note
Robinson, Sir Hercules, Governor,

77 note, 157, 179
Rockhill, so'
Roderigo, S., tory
Rodewald & Co., 152
Rogers, Major Thomas, 114. note
Rogivue, M., 199, 206-7, 256
Rollo, William, 139
Rookwood, 125, 166-7
Rosehaugh Co., 249
Rosling, Sir Edward, 118, 147, 180, 214
Ross, Sir Ronald, 190
Rosaiter, J. A., 96 and note, 120
Rothschild family, 5z-3; Edmund de,
53 note
Rothschild, early tea-planting, 52-3;
origin of name, 53 and note; also
122, 132-3
Rotorvane, 25o
Rowaell, Norman, 188
Rudd Bros., 1283
Rudd, William, 143
Russia, teas for, 125, 256 and note;
Czarewitch of, 201; tea promotion,
199, 205-6; see also U.S.S.R.
Rutherford, H. K., at Mariawatte, 31,
127; as promotion pioneer, 197-8,
209
Ryan, Bryce, his Agricultural Systems

of Ceylon, quoted, 236
Ryan, James, 202
Ryan, J. L., 96 note
Ryan, Patrick, 43
Sabonadiere & Co., 99> 133-4
Sabonadiere family: F. R. and W. A.,
133-4; W. A.'s Coffee Planter of
Ceylon quoted, Ito, 133
St. Andrews, 105
St. Clair, 43
St. Coombs, see Tea Research Institute
St. Joachim, see Tea Research Institute
St. Louis World's Fair, 209
St. Rumbolds, 116
Salada Co, 208
Sapulmakande, Pl. t 8d
Saudi Arabia, 259
Saunders, F. R., 172
Schools, Estate, 113
Scott, Robert, 271
'S.D.' (Sinn dorai), explained, 23 note
Seaforth, 55, 95, 167
Seed, Tea, India's imports from China,
45-6 ; consignments to Ceylon, 5o,
55, 7o; distribution by Botanic
Gardens, 55, 67; problems of supply,
/15-16; seed-bearers, Pl. 17b
Sembawatte, 167, 169, 198
Senanayake, D. S., 191, 242-3
Senanayake, R. G., t58
317
INDEX
Shade, theories of, 126
Shakspeare, Walter, 147, 225, 23/
Shand families, los; Charles, 55, 123124; J. L., 66, 177, 185, 199, 201;
P. R., 76
Shastri, Lal Bahadur, 243
Shaw Wallace & Co. (now Shaw
Wallace & Hedges), 540
Sheen, 285
Sherwood, z o5
Shipping lines, /58 note
Shuck Estate, The, quoted, 104
Singleton-Salmon, R., 187 note
Sinhalese estate labour, 21 and note
Sittnapitiya, 30-1
Skeen, William, his Mountain Life
quoted, 37
Skinner, Major T., 32; his Letter to the
Governor of Ceylon quoted, 233, 236
Skrine & Co., 141
Skrine family: Duncan, Edward, A. D.,
R. H., 141
Slater, G. C., 229
Smallholdings, 240-I
Sogama, 163, x7o
Somerset, 84
Somerville & Co., 149-51, 159
Somerville, W., 151
Song of Ceylon (film), 229
Souter, David, 6o
South Africa, tea-growing, 56, 257;
promotion, 228, 266; as Ceylon
market, 257; Coffee Rust, 257
Spiers & Pond, 201
Spring Valley, 101-2, 118, 122, 142
Springwood, 5 5o
Stair, 505
State Plantations Corp., 241
Statistics, Ceylon tea, z88
Stehn, George, 170-I
Stellenburg, estate and Gap, 18, 58;
chinchona on, 91
Steuart family: George, James, Joseph,
53o-i; James and Civil Service oath,
32, 13o
Steuart, George, & Co., 130-2, 135,
47
Stewart family: Robert, is, 126;
George, Walter, x25
Stewart, G. K., 226-7, 229
Stewart, J. M. W., 88 note
Stewart Mackenzie, J. A. Governor,
32, 194
Still, John, 227
Stirling, zos
Stiven, Henry, 59, 61, 63, PI. sa
Stockdale, F. A., 219
Strachan, Charles & J. L., 142-3
Strathspey, 56
Subsidies, replanting, 246; rehabilitation, 247
Suckling, H. J., his General Description

of Ceylon quoted, 41
Sudan, 258
Sukhum Botanic Gardens, 56
Sweden, tea-growing in, 56
Sweeting, E. C., ma
Switzerland, Geneva Exhibition, zo3;
promotion, z66
Syon House, Middlesex, 56
Syria, 259
Talanhande, 88 note
Tamils, immigrant, 21; early recruitment, 40-3; immobilisation, 57;
social life and housing, io8, 110-13;
routes from S. India, 41, I09-so;
numbers, 41, III; clothing, 23, 113;
savings, 113; Coast Agency and
Labour Commission, xo8, 188-9;
tundu abolished, 189; immigration
control and repatriation, 21, 241-3;
in modern world, 243-5
Tanzania, 251
Tasmania, los
Taxation, see Export Duties, Tea
Industry
Taylor, James, parentage and early life,
60-1; departure for Ceylon, 59, 61;
on Naranghena and Loolecondera,
63-78; as cinchona grower, 65-6,
89-92; first tea clearing, 7o; experiments in manufacture, 55 and note,
75-3; pruning and plucking, 73-4;
Darjeeling holiday, 77; P.A. testimonial, 77, 186; at cross-purposes
with owners, 78; illness and death,
78; funeral, 57, 78; tributes by Leake,
66, D. Morris, 71, Sir W. Gregory,
77; personal characteristics, 57, 75-6;
Pls. 4a, 5a
Taylor, Margaret, Michael and Robert,
6o
Taylor, Miss, 76
Tea Bureaux, 228 note
Tea Controller, 246
Tea Convention, 272-3
Tea Councils, 262, z67
Tea-growing; a long-term commitment,
48-9; Ceylon experiments, 50-6, and
expansion, 94-6; pioneer methods,
/16-18, Pls. 7a, 86, 12; world progress 252-4
Tea Plant (Camellia sinensis) in China,
44-6; wild in Assam, 45-6; botanical
name, 47; jars defined, 47; introduction into Ceylon, 49-56; China
jat criticised, 48; see also Seed,
Vegetative Propagation
Tea Research Institute, early history,
220; St. Coombs purchased, 221;
318
INDEX
`clonal revolution', 221-2; pest and
disease control, 222-3; Blister Blight
battle, 223; St. Joachim founded,
224; instant tea experiments, 270;
Pls. 8a, 17b, 195
Tea Trade, Ceylon's reliance on, 2o;
in Colombo, 129-58; in London,
160-75; see also Exports
Temple, Judge Christopher, 137
Tennent, Sir Emerson, 139; his
History of Ceylon quoted, 33, 35, 53
Tetley, Joseph, & Co., 203
Theodore & Rawlins, 162
Thirty Committee, see Promotion
Thom, Alex, 203
Thomas, A. H., 105
Thompson, W., J. & H., Messrs., 152,
rho, 166, 174, 26o; W. J., jun., 170.
Thomson, Alexander, 136
Thomson, Alston & Co., 136, 147
Thornhill, P. W., 269
Thwaites, G. H. K., of Peradeniya,
early career, 66; supplies Taylor's
first tea-seed, 167; briefs Morice,
68-9; favours China jat, 68, 107;
personal characteristics, 67 and note;
quoted on Coffee Rust, 82, 84;
correspondence with Kew, 89-go,
Pl. 4b
Thwaites, Dr. J., 67 note
Tientsin, 105, 172
Times of Ceylon, 33, 188, 197
Tindall & Co., 136
Tindall, William, 136-7
Tottenham, Charles, 91 and note
Trade Unions, rise of, 243; disputes,
244; leadership, 245
Trafalgar, rzo
Travers, Joseph, & Sons, 161
Trimen, Dr. H., so
Trincomalee, as naval base and possible
coffee port, 158; as tea port, 158-9,
Pl. zzb
Tropical Agriculturist, founded, 196
Tubbs, Dr F. R., 221-2
Tullibody, 95
`Tundu', abolition of, 189
Tunisia, 258
Tumour, Hon. George, 32
Twining & Co., 161
Tyndall, John, 139, 172
Tytler, R. B., 42, 65, 96, 122, 177, 181
Udaveria, 156
Mere, W. H., his All About Tea
quoted, 72, 88; on research, 219
Uniforms, as workers' clothing, 113
United Arab Republic, 258 and note,
266
United Kingdom, as market for

Ceylon tea, 163-4, 169, 216, 2.54 and
note; consumption, 164, 254 note,
267; promotion, 172-3, 227-8, 268;
`generic', campaign, 267-8
United Kingdom Tea Co., 174
Unugalla, 107
Upper Sinnapitlya, 31
Ury, 76
U.S.A., tea-growing, 56; Ceylon tea in,
256; promotion, 207-10; Tea Council,
262
U.S.S.R., tea imports and policy, 256257; see also Russia
Uva, Province of, 53, 101, 107
Vanderspar, J. J., & Co., 157 note
Vegetative Propagation, higher yields
from, ax, 248-9; history of, 221-2;
`V.P.' tea, Pl. 8a; processes, Pls. 175,
Villiers, E. C., 225
Villiers, Sir Thomas, his Pioneers of the
Tea Industry quoted, 38, 86, roi,
105-6; his Mercantile Lore quoted,
132 et seq.; in public life, rsz note
Miner's Hill, 105
Viner, Thomas, 281-2
Visiting Agents, 131-2
Volkart Bros., 206
Walker, George Chapman, 151
Walker & Grieg, 121, 123
Walker family: John, 121-2; William,
121
Walker Sons & Co., 121, 204

Wall, George, 77; on Coffee Rust, 83
note; as agent, 14o-1; as planters'
leader, 176, 178, 18r
Wallich, Dr, of Calcutta, 45-6; sends
seed to Peradeniya, 50
Wallokellie, 131
Waloya, 31, 58; machinery on, 65
Waltrim, Pl., 3b
Ward, Sir Henry, Governor, 178
Ward, Marshall, 83
Ward, Dr N. B., 54
Watson, J. D., 54-5
Wattegodde, 138
Waugh, Alec, his Lipton Story quoted,
153
Wavendon, 95
Webb, H. A., 225
Webster Automatic Pocketing Co.,
155-6
Webster, Capt. R. Valentine, 155-6
Weeding, controversies over, 126
Weinholt Bros. Calcutta, 7o note, 71
Weliganga, 155
319
INDEX
Wembley, Empire Exhibition, 225 note
Wendt, Lionel, 229
Westland, William, 17o
Westover, George, 17 1
Wewesse, 107
Weyvelhena, 102
Whittall & Co. (now Whittall, Boustead), 77-8, 135-6, 140-1
Whittall, James, 184
White, George, & Co., 151, 16o, 166
White, J. T., 135
Wickham, Henry, 66
Wickham, R. W., and Mrs, 96, 103
Wight, James, 166
Wilkins, L. M. W., 84
Wilkins, M. L., 219
William II, German Emperor, 201-.2
Williams, Harry, his Ceylon, Pearl of
the East quoted, 38, 111
Williams, J. C., 31
Williams, Roy, 228
Willie, , o5
Wilson, Clarke & Co., 157
Wilson, David, 141
Wilson, Sir John, 32, 139
Wilson, Ritchie & Co., 121
Wilson, Smithett & Co., 151, 16o, 17o
Wiltshire, 282
Windsor Forest, 55, 167, 169
Withering, tats and troughs, 25o,

Pl. 3b
Wood, Thomas, 107
Workers' dress, 23, 113
World Crops quoted, 8o-3
World Wars, 213-15, 233-4; tea
control in, 214-15, 234
Worms-Badulla, 138
Worms, G. & M. B., 138,147
Worms (or de Worms) family, Baron
George on tea experiments, 52, 53
note; Maurice's journey to China,
53 and note; tea planting on Rothschild, 52-4, 122, 133; Gabriel as
merchant, 138; sale of estates, 138;
Baron Charles, 53 note
Wright, Basil, 229
Wright, Commander D. G. H., 158
Yakdessa District, early tea in, 54-5

Yapame, 112
Young, Andrew, 231 note
Yoxford, 285
Yuillefiekl, 1o5
Zuckerman, Sir Solly, 190
320
over 4000 feet

High-grown tea
TEA PLANTING DISTRICTS

IN CEYLON
2000-4000 feet
Mid-grown tea
I 1
sea -Ievel - z000 feet

Low-grown tea
Matale
Matalefeapt & Lagalla
Matale
::fe :,:-..:;. .
W00.k.
::%,. -:..;.:. '
'::::::::....:il u n a sg ir. iy:02.:

.:::::::::,'
Nitre Cave
-..P..41 ,
:..:'; '-:-;:M at a I e ..:'.f.tisriticKJ,
.....:::::
south *:...:!'::::::.:'4
Medamahanuwara
Wittea.Ma.:......... . :.:...::-..,,
Galagedara
':-., .....:-.1:i.oi;g.
...,.. KANDY '........:...
Ala 9 a la
..
Kegalla
......liaila..:.'.-::::::
Kadugannawa
''...."::::::::........e.''''' ... HiWaheta lower
.
....
'.::-."-.... Nilarnhe:.::.
.-.....-::.
'.....;.:. . ;..k.:....
6vOtii:.4Per
:;:::::::':::::::.:;.......:.h.::::
.-- :*:"
::'
''''
PYsS.g
11t ..
6610ii30::... 1:kat,
0446..e low0.,
tk; it:4.:-..::
Yakkeija
.::::.
....,......
, .. ...:
.
CO LOM BO
Air:I.dal
iitmile
Kelani Valley
,ajiutale
alangoda
Ratnapura
Kalutara
. . ..
Rakwana
'
MorraWak.
Korai e
Matara &
Weligama
20
gp
Miles
30
TEA PLANTING DISTRICTS IN CEYLON

THIS map shows the 46 planting districts in Ceylon which have more than 800 acres
of Tea. In some districts there is a small additional acreage of mixed tea and rubber.
2,602 Madulsima & Hewa Eliya 10,394

Alagala
18,746
Ambagamuwa 3,906 Maskeliya
2,843
33,67o Matale South
Badulla
1,748
Matale
West

Balangoda
14,409
28,350 Matale East & Lagalla ii,68o
Dickoya
Dickoya Lower 11,609 Matara & Weligama 4,317
6,597
Dimbula
45,843 Maturata
2,554
11,617 Medamanhanuwara
Dolosbage
1,607 Morawak Korale 12,087
Galagedara
15,720
New Galway
Galle
3,509
5,000 Nilambe
Hantane
5,498
4,615
20,483 Nuwara Eliya
Haputale
Haputale West 2,035 Passara
9,533
5,681
Hewaheta Lower 6,901 Pundaluoya
17,523
Hewaheta Upper 5,936 Pussellawa
8,299
3,089 Rakwana
Hunasgiriya
5,847
Kadugannawa 2,510 Ramboda
6,727
9,019 Rangala
Kalutara
7,117 Ratnapura
30,839
Kegalla
Kelani Valley 11,916 Udapussellawa 15,141
Kelebokka
5554 Walapane Lower 1,059
1,665
6,911 Wattegama
Knuckles
12,005 Yakdessa
Kotmale
883
Matale North has 524 acres of tea, 433 acres of mixed tea and rubber.
rziAt../.47Arzrzr rArm-Afr:zrzWer r r r rerzarirry.

MAURICE ZINKIN
DEVELOPMENT FOR FREE AfMA
1r
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my way, combining to an unusual degree felicity of style, hard
realism and far-sighted idealism.' GEOFFREY CROWTHER
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lively and lucid and always aware of the political and religious
boulders that can come crashing through the best economic
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Revised edition 25s net
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PAST IMPERATIVE
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rj
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CHATTO & WINDUS
z.qq,qqgqqqqgoggrAirwk7T-2,m2fo.7w7;
D. M. FORREST
Although D. M. Forrest, author of this book, has
been 'in tea' for over twenty years, he started life as
a writer and journalist. He joined what was then the
Empire Tea Bureau at the end of World War II, to
edit its publications, and became Commissioner in
1952. The following year Ceylon took over the organization and Mr. Forrest was largely responsible for
expanding it into the present chain of Ceylon Tea
Centres, which provide promotional headquarters
throughout Britain. He retired in 1965, but started c,
work again immediately as Special Centenary Officer
to organize the 1967 celebrationsand to write A
Hundred Years of Ceylon Tea.
CHATTO AND WINDUS
40 William IV Street
London, W.C.2

Hundred Years of Ceylon Tea 1867 1967

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A

MOST people will be surprised to hear that the great

A HUNDRED YEARS OF CEYLON TEA

Fertiliser for the tea-fieldsthe key to Ceylon's prosperity

Chapter 1 Ceylon Tea in its Island Home

z The Plantation System is Born

3 How Tea Came to Ceylon

4 The Loolecondera Story

5 The Collapse of Coffee What next?

6 Tea Takes Over

8 Buyers and Sellers in Colombo I

9 Buyers and Sellers in Colombo II

io And So to Mincing Lane

II The Planters Get Organised

Iz The Birth of Ceylon Tea Promotion

Second Interlude The Chasm: 1914-18 213

14 Under Pressure in a Changing World 233

16 At the Sign of the Lion

Epilogue Old Acres, New Men 27/

Fertiliser for Ceylon's tea-fields (Adolf Morath)

Plates appearing between pages 96 and 97

4 Early auction catalogue Ceylon tea (Gow Wilson and

5 First tea kiosk, Colombo Jetty (Ceylon Planters' Association)

Tea planting districts in Ceylon

CEYLON TEA IN ITS ISLAND HOME

at it on the map, the first thing likely to strike you

A HUNDRED YEARS OF CEYLON TEA

A HUNDRED YEARS OF CEYLON TEA

CEYLON TEA IN ITS ISLAND HOME

A HUNDRED YEARS OF CEYLON TEA

2. The Pioneer Belt Loolecondera and other

CEYLON TEA IN ITS ISLAND HOME

A HUNDRED YEARS OF CEYLON TEA

CEYLON TEA IN ITS ISLAND HOME

A HUNDRED YEARS OF CEYLON TEA

CEYLON TEA IN ITS ISLAND HOME

N our ever-flexible English language, the word 'plantation' was

THE PLANTATION SYSTEM IS BORN

A HUNDRED YEARS OF CEYLON TEA

THE PLANTATION SYSTEM IS BORN

A HUNDRED YEARS OF CEYLON TEA

THE PLANTATION SYSTEM IS BORN

A HUNDRED TEARS OF CEYLON TEA

THE PLANTATION SYSTEM IS BORN

(London, Longmans, 5th ed. 186o).

A HUNDRED YEARS OF CEYLON TEA

THE PLANTATION SYSTEM IS BORN

P. Hull, was almost moved to a prose

'Under the influence of the showers which usually fall in March . . .

A HUNDRED YEARS OF CEYLON TEA

THE PLANTATION SYSTEM IS BORN

A HUNDRED YEARS OF CEYLON TEA

THE PLANTATION SYSTEM IS BORN

A HUNDRED YEARS OF CEYLON TEA

THE PLANTATION SYSTEM IS BORN

A General Description of Ceylon (London, Chapman & Hall, 2 vols., 1871).

A HUNDRED YEARS OF CEYLON TEA

THE PLANTATION SYSTEM IS BORN

HOW TEA CAME TO CEYLON

'DRINKING OF TEA: RULES OF HEALTH'

Japanese, Twelfth Century

OONER or later some crew-cut scholar, burrowing away in the

HOW TEA CAME TO CEYLON

A HUNDRED YEARS OF CEYLON TEA