Ever since I wrote that piece on clocks, I have been flooded with emails asking as to what I meant by the easy chair being called a Bombay Fornicator.
Well, the term was from the good old British Raj and not coined by me. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable describes the Bombay Fornicator as an Anglo-Indian term meaning a wicker chair with an extended footrest that’s long enough to facilitate sexual intercourse. (p.165, 18th Edition).
There is a lot on this on google. But anyway, I decided that a picture (or three pictures) is worth a 1000 words. So here goes:
My guess is that it began life as a mere planter’s chair and its life changed when an enterprising Indian from Bombay (somehow you can’t imagine the oh-so-propah Brits thinking of it) realised that it had multiple uses.
Come to think of it, grandfather objected to anyone sitting on this chair! He was strongly Victorian.
We used to have an identical easy chair at home. Much later I learned it was called a Planter’s chair, now I have learnt it has yet another name!
A very suggestive name – no doubt. But I remember we used to have at least two of these (and fight to sit on it) in Government rest houses (The ” dak-bungalows”) whenever my father took us on one of his official tours or during overnight stays while travelling by road. At the time we just called it the “Arm chair”. I’m sure my mother would have forbidden us to sit on it had she known this name!!
I had seen many of these in Chettinad houses some 30 years back . I don’t know if some of them are preserved still.
Ravi
Good old days , railway waiting ros used to have these (first and second class waiting rooms) . Sometime in early sixties.
Suresh Bajaj
How much are these worth.. I have onE with and Ottoman that I got at a antique story and with Reading the history I really don’t like it now. Told it was from late 1800’s