On the footpath of Gate no. C beside the Calcutta High Court you are likely to miss a piece of Calcutta history (Calcutta renamed as Kolkata) At the first sight it is just an ordinary dustbin; black and gray, rusted, often smeared with red spittle of a ‘Pan’ chewer. It looks forlorn, lost in a time long gone bye and dug into the footpath that has deprived it of the mobility that was its forte. If you look a little carefully at the embossed letters on its breast you are likely to ask what the hell “Street Orderly” is? For the ward ‘orderly’ is remarkably similar to ‘ardally’, the ubiquitous Man Friday of British Civil Servants in India or Boxwallahs.
Probably, there is no other similar unit in Kolkata. My friend BBD, an advocate of the court was intrigued and sent me the photographs of this object from many angles but much to his surprise could not find the name of the manufacturer on its iron body. But my friend of the internet age, Wikipedia came to my rescue. It clarified the origin of that name: the robust steel DC (with two collection boxes) & SC (with one collection box) Street Orderly Barrows are made from tubular galvanised steel box section.
It appears that by the 1840s Manchester the first industrial city had become England’s unhealthiest place. Due to robust increase in passenger rail service, unsanitary environmental issues had cropped up and needed to be addressed urgently to maintain aesthetic goals and safety. Joseph Whitworth an inventor of repute designed and rigged up the mechanical street sweeper to speedily remove trash from the streets.
The Civil Engineer and Architect’s Journal, Volume 6, 1843 describes the machine in great detail:
“This machine, lately brought into operation in the town of Manchester, where it excited a considerable deal of public attention, has lately been introduced into the metropolis, and is now employed in cleaning Regent-street. It is the invention of Mr. Whitworth, of the firm of Messrs. Whitworth and Co., of Manchester, engineers, by whom it has been patented. The principle of the invention consists in employing the rotary motion of locomotive wheels, moved by horse or other power, to raise the loose soil from the surface of the ground and deposit it in a vehicle attached. The apparatus for this purpose is simple in its construction; it consists of a series of brooms (3 ft. wide) suspended from a light frame of wrought iron, hung behind a cart, the body of which is placed near the ground, for greater facility in loading. The draught is easy for two horses, and throughout the process of filling, scarcely a larger amount of force is required than would be necessary to draw the full cart an equal distance.”
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*It states further:
“Two machines are advantageously worked together, one a little in advance of the other. Not only is the operation of cleansing a particular street thus effected more rapidly, but the two drivers can occasionally assist each other, and one of them (at higher wages) may exercise a supervision over both machines.”
“The success of the operation is no less remarkable than its novelty. Proceeding at a moderate speed through the public streets, the cart leaves behind it a well swept tract, which forms a striking contrast with the adjacent ground. Though of the full size of a common cart, it has repeatedly filled itself in the space of six minutes from the principal thoroughfares of Manchester. This fact, while it proves the efficiency of the new apparatus, proves also the necessity of a change in the present system of street cleaning.”
Without the help of further material about how the referred “Street Orderly” box landed up on the footpath of Calcutta High Court we can only guess that a machine was bought by the then Calcutta civic authorities on a trial basis to clean the streets around the Calcutta High Court that opened in 1875.
It is possible that with available cheap native menial labour the running cost of the machine was too much. Probably the trial failed and the present box was detached from the horse drawn barrow and left literally in the dustbin of history.