David Sassoon: Reluctant Front-Runner, Relentless Consolidator

"It made him hesitate when his sons pointed excitedly to the profits being made in cotton. He declined to be hurried."

"He started active trading from a very small quayside warehouse, owned by Zacharia. It was rat-free but far removed from the spacious ancestral serdab in Baghdad which at times bulged with merchandise like an Aladdin's Cave. The dhow captains slowly came to know him as a man of honour whose word could be trusted even in the smallest enterprise. He bought wharf space and rented it to traders who arrived by sea or overland to sell their goods and stock up. He added steadily to his capital but preferred to act as a middleman, particularly for Bombay merchants, rather than compete independently with local dealers who had more substantial reserves. It was the birth of a lifelong antipathy to all gambling transactions, however tempting. Cautiously he began to export a few horses, dates, sheepskins and small consignments of pearls to India, content with the lighter cargoes of silks and metal-ware that came back. With neither boats nor camels to distribute goods, he wisely decided to limit his imports."

"David Sassoon was, however, wise enough to see the dangers of becoming too inward-looking and parochial. He endowed the Gothic-style Sassoon General Hospital at Poona for the benefit of all sects and creeds of Indians, as well as Jewish patients. Built on two floors with accommodation for two hundred men and women, it was equipped on the most modern Western scale, together with a hostel for doctors and nurses. Separate buildings were put up for lepers and maternity cases. The usual massive clock tower was included in the architect's plans. Punctuality was the first unoriental habit David Sassoon picked up from the British. He also gave generously towards an asylum in Poona for the relief of destitute invalids, aware that after-care might be desperately needed by those discharged from hospital, still crippled and unable to work. He once returned thoughtfully from visiting Abdullah's villa at Mahabaleshwar where European fruits and vegetables flourished in a red clay soil. He could not help contrasting its vivid flowers and the woods swarming with wild birds and game with the filth and flies he had just left below in Bombay. He soon bought a few acres and set them aside as camping grounds for the poor."