The next improvement, that I recollect, this time in connection with the building of new business premises, was when Jardine Skinner & Co. vacated their old offices which were situated on the site of Anderson Wright & Co.’s and Kettlewell Bullen & Co.’s present offices, and removed to their present very handsome quarters which they have for so long occupied.  I very well recollect the style of their old place of business and how the exterior strongly reminded me of the cotton warehouses in Liverpool.  The interior was a big, rambling, ramshackle kind of a place with but few pretensions to being an office such as we see at the present day.

[Illustration:  Photo. by Bourne & Shepherd Town Hall, Calcutta.]

[Illustration:  Photo. by Bourne & Shepherd Site of Black Hole of Calcutta]

The whole was of course eventually pulled down, as was also a similar range of buildings in the south of Clive Ghaut Street on which Macneill & Co.’s offices were built.

It has just occurred to me whilst writing that it might perhaps be a matter of some interest to brokers and others engaged in business at the present time to be informed of the various changes that have taken place during the last forty or fifty years in the location of the offices of many of the firms with whom they have daily intercourse.  Those to whom it does not appeal can skip the next few pages.

To begin with, George Henderson & Co. were the first to remove their offices after their old premises in Aloe Godown were dismantled.  They first of all migrated to 3, Fairlie Place, and after many years to 25, Mangoe Lane, now in the occupation of Lyall Marshall & Co. and Lovelock & Lewes.  They finally settled down in their present offices in Clive Street which they have greatly improved and enlarged.

The next firm on the list to make a change of quarters was Jardine Skinner & Co., to whom I have previously alluded.

Macneill & Co., who had branched off from the firm of Begg Dunlop & Co., had their first offices in the building now in the occupation of the Exchange Gazette Printing Office and Mackenzie Lyall & Co’s Furniture Range; afterwards they removed to the Strand at the north-west corner of Canning Street, and then established themselves in their present premises to which they have made considerable additions and improvements.

Kettlewell Bullen & Co. have had many flittings since I first became acquainted with them.  My first recollection of them was when they occupied a very old building, 5, New China Bazaar Street, which has been pulled down, and on the site of which have been erected the premises containing the Bristol Grill on the ground floor and several offices on the upper storeys.  They then removed to 19 and 22, Strand, then back again to 5, New China Bazaar Street, afterwards to 5, Mission Row, finally settling down in their present quarters which they have greatly improved and largely extended.