The visit of King George V and his wife Mary to Madras in early 1906, during the time they were the Prince and Princess of Wales was one of the grandest events of the city in the early 20th Century. It was a short, yet jam-packed visit lasting five days, marked by public receptions, entertainments in their honour and ceremonial visits. There was also another important development, which was to become the father-of-all renaming exercises, the likes of which the city keeps seeing regularly even today. The locality of Black Town was renamed as George Town.
According to the book Reference in the press to the visit of their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales to India, 1905-1906, the initiative for the renaming exercise came from the Government of Madras itself, which had made enquiries amongst the native citizens through the Commissioner of Police as to the general public feeling with regards to the altering of the name.
Interestingly, a large portion of the correspondents had suggested an alteration of the name to Ampthill Town, commemorating Lord Ampthill, then the incumbent Governor of Madras. One of the prominent voices in favour of renaming it as George Town was journalist CV Swaminatha Iyer, who ran the Viveka Chintamani magazine. And, that was how it came to be known thereafter, with an announcement being made to the effect in the Fort St George Gazette Extraordinary dated Saturday, 27 January 1906.
The grand Coronation Durbar held in Delhi in 1911 saw the proclamation of the King George V and Queen Mary as the Emperor and Empress of India. It was an event that saw celebrations across the country and commemorations in various forms. It can thus be reasonably surmised that the idea for presenting a statue of the king to the city of Madras too must have originated from this event. Funding the statue was one of the prominent Gujarati businessmen of Madras, Dewan Bahadur Govindoss Chaturbhujadoss, senior partner of one of the old businesses of the city, Chathoorbhooja Doss Khushal Doss & Sons, which was first established in 1828 with its primary business being banking, and trading in silk, musk and spices. Over the course of the next century, several other businesses were added. Govindoss Chathurbhujadoss was appointed the Sheriff of Madras in 1913, when he was 35 years of age. He was involved in several public causes and was associated with organisations such as the SPCA, the South Indian Chamber of Commerce, the Indian Bank, etc. The statue was presented to the public in 1914.
That the city had a great fascination for King George V is evident from the fact that there were probably seven statues/busts of the emperor in and around its limits (MM, March 1-15, 2021). The one in George Town is the only one surviving in its original location.