Sir Stuart Hogg Market… The ‘Grand Old Man’ of Indian Municipal Markets

Markets all over the world have a story to tell… not just about what they offer, but, the places, people and socio-economic development of the entire region. In this context, Sir Stuart Hogg Market (‘New Market’ to the world) of Kolkata offers unique insight into the whims, fancies, vision and a myriad other things that contributed to the grandeur and growth of British Raj in India.

In 1871, moved by a well orchestrated outcry from English residents, a committee of the then Calcutta Corporation began to contemplate a market that would be the preserve of the city’s British residents. Spurred by the Committee’s deliberations, the Corporation purchased Lindsay Street, made plans to raze the old Fenwick’s Bazar located there, and commissioned Richard Roskell Bayne, an architect of the East Indian Railway Company, to design the Victorian Gothic market complex which would take its place.

Interestingly, this masterstroke to temporarily salve the ego of the Britishers — with a view to create a modern, well-appointed market for all in the long run — was conceived by Sir Stuart Saunders Hogg, the then Chairman of the Corporation. Sir Stuart Saunders Hogg CIE (February 17, 1833 ~ March 23, 1921) was a civil servant in the Indian Civil Services of British India. Born in 1833 in Delhi 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 Punjab. Later, he joined the Bengal government as the Police Commissioner of Calcutta where he established the Detective Department. It was perhaps his close association with the locals that may have spurred the idea of creating this landamark.

The giant shopping arcade was thrown open to the English populace with some fanfare on January 1, 1874. News of Calcutta’s first municipal market spread rapidly. Affluent colonials from all over India shopped at exclusive retailers who were housed in the New Market. As a tribute to his tenacious support for the plans to build the New Market — 28 years later, on December 2, 1903, the Market was officially named Sir Stuart Hogg Market and later shortened to Hogg Market. Bengali society, in the British era, called it Hogg Shaheber Bajaar, a name that is still in use, just as a painting of Sir Stuart Hogg still hangs in the Corporation’s portrait gallery.