round the town, and to be connected at both ends with the river, but never completed, combined with the natural position of Calcutta to render it one of the safest places for trade in India during the expiring struggles of the Mogul empire. It grew up without any fixed plan, and with little regard to the sanitary arrangements required for a town. Some parts of it lay below high-water mark on the Hugli, and its low level throughout rendered its drainage a most difficult problem. Until far on in the 18th century the malarial jungle and paddy fields closely hemmed in the European mansions; the vast plain (maidán), now covered with gardens and promenades, was then a swamp during three months of each year; the spacious quadrangle known as Wellington Square was built upon a filthy creek. A legend relates how one-fourth of the European inhabitants perished in twelve months, and during seventy years the mortality was so great that the name of Calcutta, derived from the village of Kalikata, was identified by mariners with Golgotha, the place of a skull.
The chief event in the history of Calcutta is the sack of the town, and the capture of Fort William in 1756, by Suraj-ud-Dowlah, the nawab of Bengal. The majority of the English officials took ship and fled to the mouth of the Hugli river. The Europeans, under John Zephaniah Holwell, who remained were compelled, after a short resistance, to surrender themselves to the mercies of the young prince. The prisoners, numbering 146 persons, were forced into the guard-room, a chamber measuring only 18 ft. by 14 ft. 10 in., with but two small windows, where they were left for the night. It was the 20th of June; the heat was intense; and next morning only 23 were taken out alive, among them Holwell, who left an account of the awful sufferings endured in the “Black Hole.” The site of the Black Hole is now covered with a black marble slab, and the incident is commemorated by a monument erected by Lord Curzon in 1902. The Mahommedans retained possession of Calcutta for about seven months, and during this brief period the name of the town was changed in official documents to Alinagar. In January 1757 the expedition despatched from Madras, under the command of Admiral Watson and Colonel Clive, regained possession of the city. They found many of the houses of the English residents demolished and others damaged by fire. The old church of St John lay in ruins. The native portion of the town had also suffered much. Everything of value had been swept away, except the merchandise of the Company within the fort, which had been reserved for the nawab. The battle of Plassey was fought on the 23rd of June 1757, exactly twelve months after the capture of Calcutta. Mir Jafar, the nominee of the English, was created nawab of Bengal, and by the treaty which raised him to this position he agreed to make restitution to the Calcutta merchants for their losses. The English received £500,000, the Hindus and Mahommedans £200,000, and the Armenians £70,000. By another clause in this treaty the Company was permitted to establish a mint, the visible sign in India of territorial sovereignty, and the first coin, still bearing the name of the Delhi emperor, was issued on the 19th of August 1757. The restitution money was divided among the sufferers by a committee of the most respectable inhabitants. Commerce rapidly revived and the ruined city was rebuilt. Modern Calcutta dates from 1757. The old fort was abandoned, and its site devoted to the custom-house and other government offices. A new fort, the present Fort William, was begun by Clive a short distance lower down the river, and is thus the second of that name. It was not finished till 1773, and is said to have cost two millions sterling. At this time also the maidán, the park of Calcutta, was formed; and the healthiness of its position induced the European inhabitants gradually to shift their dwellings eastward, and to occupy what is now the Chowringhee quarter.
Up to 1707, when Calcutta was first declared a presidency, it had been dependent upon the older English settlement at Madras. From 1707 to 1773 the presidencies were maintained on a footing of equality; but in the latter year the act of parliament was passed, which provided that the presidency of Bengal should exercise a control over the other possessions of the Company; that the chief of that presidency should be styled governor-general; and that a supreme court of judicature should be established at Calcutta. In the previous year, 1772, Warren Hastings had taken under the immediate management of the Company’s servants the general administration of Bengal, which had hitherto been left in the hands of the old Mahommedan officials, and had removed the treasury from Murshidabad to Calcutta. The latter town thus became the capital of Bengal and the seat of the supreme government in India. In 1834 the governor-general of Bengal was created governor-general of India, and was permitted to appoint a deputy-governor to manage the affairs of Lower Bengal during his occasional absence. It was not until 1854 that a separate head was appointed for Bengal, who, under the style of lieutenant-governor, exercises the same powers in civil matters as those vested in the governors in council of Madras or Bombay, although subject to closer supervision by the supreme government. Calcutta is thus at present the seat both of the supreme and the local government, each with an independent set of offices. (See Bengal.)
See A. K. Ray, A Short History of Calcutta (Indian Census, 1901); H. B. Hyde, Parochial Annals of Bengal (1901); K. Blechynden, Calcutta, Past and Present (1905); H. E. Busteed, Echoes from Old Calcutta (1897); G. W. Forrest, Cities of India (1903); C. R. Wilson, Early Annals of the English in Bengal (1895); and Old Fort William in Bengal (1906); Imperial Gazetteer of India (Oxford, 1908), s.v. “Calcutta.”
CALDANI, LEOPOLDO MARCO ANTONIO (1725–1813), Italian anatomist and physician, was born at Bologna in 1725. After studying under G. B. Morgagni at Padua, he began to teach practical medicine at Bologna, but in consequence of the intrigues of which he was the object he returned to Padua, where in 1771 he succeeded Morgagni in the chair of anatomy. He continued to lecture until 1805 and died at Padua in 1813. His works include Institutiones pathologicae (1772), Institutiones physiologicae (1773) and Icones anatomicae (1801–1813).
His brother, Petronio Maria Caldani (1735–1808), was professor of mathematics at Bologna, and was described by J. le R. D’Alembert as the “first geometer and algebraist of Italy.”
CALDECOTT, RANDOLPH (1846–1886), English artist and illustrator, was born at Chester on the 22nd of March 1846. From 1861 to 1872 he was a bank clerk, first at Whitchurch in Shropshire, afterwards at Manchester; but devoted all his spare time to the cultivation of a remarkable artistic faculty. In 1872 he migrated to London, became a student at the Slade School and finally adopted the artist’s profession. He gained immediately a wide reputation as a prolific and original illustrator, gifted with a genial, humorous faculty, and he succeeded also, though in less degree, as a painter and sculptor. His health gave way in 1876, and after prolonged suffering he died in Florida on the 12th of February 1886. His chief book illustrations are as follows:—Old Christmas (1876) and Bracebridge Hall (1877), both by Washington Irving; North Italian Folk (1877), by Mrs Comyns Carr; The Harz Mountains (1883); Breton Folk (1879), by Henry Blackburn; picture-books (John Gilpin, The House that Jack Built, and other children’s favourites) from 1878 onwards; Some Aesop’s Fables with Modern Instances, &c. (1883). He held a roving commission for the Graphic, and was an occasional contributor to Punch. He was a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-colours.
See Henry Blackburn, Randolph Caldecott, Personal Memoir of his Early Life (London, 1886).
CALDER, SIR ROBERT, Bart. (1745–1818), British admiral, was born at Elgin, in Scotland, on the 2nd of July 1745 (o.s.). He belonged to a very ancient family of Morayshire, and was the second son of Sir Thomas Calder of Muirton. He was educated at the grammar school of Elgin, and at the age of fourteen entered the British navy as midshipman. In 1766 he was serving as lieutenant of the “Essex,” under Captain the Hon. George Faulkner, in the West Indies. Promotion came slowly, and it was not till 1782 that he attained the rank of post-captain. He acquitted himself honourably in the various services to which he was called, but for a long time had no opportunity
