Sir Stuart Saunders Hogg

In March of this year the Rhinos locked horns once again with the Old Bill in the 20th consecutive annual match for the Calcutta Cup.

Geoff's wish lives on.

But what of the Calcutta Cup itself. Geoff presented the cup one Saturday afternoon in 1986 in the Sports Bar of the Police Club in Hong Kong. Pulling the cup from a rucksack, he just bunged it on the bar and, in his usual gruff northern English manner said 'There yer go lads, picked this up in a Calcutta bazaar, yer can play fer this.' That's all we were told.

The cup is inscribed: 'The Sir Stuart Hogg Cup'

So just who was Sir Stuart Hogg, and why does he have a cup named after him? And why Calcutta? Well, we sent our top investigators to the Indian sub continent in order to find out. They never came back, so we Googled Sir Stuart instead. The portrait here is not of Rob Guest in his early years, it is in fact the rather dashing Sir Stuart.

Stuart Saunders Hogg was born in 1833 to Sir James Hogg, formerly a director of the British East India Company and the Registrar of the Calcutta High Court. In 1853, at the age of twenty, Stuart Hogg entered the Indian Civil Services. During the Sepoy Mutiny, he was posted in the Panjab.
Later, he joined the Bengal government as the Police Commissioner of Calcutta where he established the Detective Department. From 1863 to 1877 he was the Chairman of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation. It was during these years that he commissioned the building of Calcutta Market. In 1875 he was knighted for his services. Shortly after Sir Stuart’s death Calcutta market was renamed Sir Stuart Hogg Market. To this day it is still referred to as Hogg's Market.

Geoff Taylor (second rickshaw, right side), leaving Sir Stuart Hogg Market, just after acquiring the Cup.

It is reasonable therefore to assume that Geoff acquired the cup in Sir Stuart Hogg Market in Calcutta. Quite fitting too that Sir Stuart was a Police Commissioner.

This is what we found out about the actual market:

As Calcutta entered the 1850s and British colonies became the order of the day, the Britishers overtly displayed their contempt to brush shoulders with “natives” at the bazaars. In 1871, swayed by an orchestrated cry from English residents, a committee of the Calcutta Corporation contemplated a market which would be the prize preserve of Calcutta’s British citizens. Spurred by the committee’s deliberations, the Corporation promptly purchased Lindsay Street. The East India Railway Company executed the designs and with a renowned architect R. Bayney, pitching, an architecturally Gothic market-complex crystallized in 1873. Bayney was honoured with a 1000 rupee award, arguably a large sum in the 1870s for his achievements. News of Calcutta’s first municipal market spread rapidly. Affluent Englishmen shopped at exclusive retailers like Rankin and Company (dressmakers), Cuthbertson and Harper (shoe-merchants) and R.W. Newman or Thacker Spink, the famous stationers and book-dealers.

New Market was thrown open with fanfare to the English populace on January 1, 1874. New Market was formally christened Sir Stuart Hogg Market on December 2, 1903. Sir Stuart then Calcutta Corporation’s Chairman, had tenaciously supported the plans for building New Market. To this day, a painting of Sir Stuart Hogg adorns Calcutta Corporation’s portrait gallery. This name was later shortened to Hogg Market. Bengali society, in the British Raj era, called it as Hogg Saheber Bazaar.

But so far still no mention of the cup. Through ‘The Peerage’ we have traced Sir Stuart’s ancestry in the hope of finding a surviving relative that could shed light on the origins of the cup. Sir Stuart did marry, and had one child (or rather he had one child with his wife. If he was the commissioner of police in Calcutta in the 1850s you can bet your life there are quite a few little turbaned Hoggites still scampering around Lindsay Street). The Hogg’s had a daughter, Evelyn Louisa.

Miss Hogg went on to marry a Hugh Gurney Barclay, and they had just one daughter too, who they strangely called Cecil. Her full name being Cecil Lorna Barclay. Must have been the heat and flies I suppose.

In 1935 Miss Cecil married a Captain Eric William Edward Fellowes, who later became the 3rd Baron Ailwyn. So Sir Stuart’s granddaughter thus became Baroness Ailwyn. Unfortunately, this latter match took place well before the invention of Viagra, and as the good 3rd Baron had a spot of bother with his lower plumbing, they remained childless.

So, as far as public records go therefore, Sir Stuart’s ancestral line ends in 1976 with the death of a childless Baroness Ailwyn.

Epilogue.

At time of going to press all other avenues of investigation, as to the origins of the Sir Stuart Hogg Cup, have drawn a blank. I think it’s reasonable to assume that Geoff picked up the cup itself in Hogg Saheber Bazaar in 1986. Sir Stuart himself appears to have been a bit of a lad, and achieved quite a lot during his life in colonial India. The fact that he has no known living relatives doesn’t help matters also.

So for now, the mystery surrounding the origin of our own Calcutta Cup lives on.

Les Bird
June 2007