How Fires Plagued Housing in the Early Years of Calcutta (1694–1695)

Calcutta’s earliest settlement at Sutanuti was precarious and combustible. In 1698 the English East India Company formally acquired the zamindari of Sutanuti (and adjoining Kalikata and Gobindapur) for ₹ 1,300. Until Fort William was built (begun 1697, completed by 1708) the Company’s officials lived in simple thatched huts. Contemporary records reveal how dangerous this was. A Calcutta factory diary entry dated 19 December 1694 reports that “about 2 in the night the house where Agent Charnock lived was burnt down thro’ the peons making a large fire under a thatch’t wall adjoining.” This was the very house of Job Charnock, the Company’s agent (and later considered Calcutta’s founder), though by 1694 it was occupied by a Mr. Ellis. Thanks to Ellis’s “great assistance,” however, most of the goods in the house were saved despite the blaze.

Just three months later, on 29 March 1695, a far more destructive fire struck Calcutta’s bazaar. The Chuttanutti diary recounts: a midday house fire fanned by a strong southerly wind “burned many others belonging to our Seamen and Soldiers, and afterwards consumed the whole Bazaar in two Hours’ time,” so fierce that “it [was] impossible to prevent.” Entire shops of salt, rice and trade goods went up in smoke. These archival snippets (from East India Company Consultations and letters) paint an evocative picture: the settlement’s open fires, wooden structures and flammable dhurries meant disaster could strike swiftly. Within weeks, the Company decided not to rebuild Charnock’s burned house at great cost, since it lay “a considerable distance from the factory,” and instead auctioned it off in April 1695 for ₹575. These incidents underscore the fragility of Calcutta’s early infrastructure and the daily hazards its inhabitants faced – from wayward campfires of servants (“peons”) to gale-driven conflagrations in the bazaar.

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