IN HASTINGS' DAY
known, devoted to the establishing of a fund for the support of disabled officers and soldiers, and the widows of officers and soldiers.
Whether by gift or by purchase, the house and land in question were acquired by Warren Hastings, and in 1763, the year in which Jaffir Ali left Alipore on his re-instatement as nawab, Hastings requested "permission of the Board to build a bridge over the Kalighat (Tolly's) Nullah, on the road to his garden house"—which request was complied with.
"Hastings House," Alipore, was the house which Hastings built in later years, and which he occupied up to the time he left India finally. The house which he first acquired lay to the west of "Hastings House," and the grounds included the whole of the land lying within the sweep of the public road. The number of houses built in this neighbourhood during recent years, and the opening of the Judges Court Road, which divides the original block, have so altered this locality that it is difficult now to trace the boundaries which a few years back it was comparatively easy to define. Some years ago Dr. Busteed, in an interesting article contributed to the Calcutta Englishman of the 27th of May, 1892, transcribed an advertisement which he had found in a file of the Calcutta
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