Before long it had eclipsed Surat as the main centre of EIC operations on the west coast, especially as the rowdy English were becoming less and less welcome there: ‘Their private whorings, drunkenesse and such like ryotts … breaking open whorehouses and rackehowses [i.e. arrack bars] have hardened the hearts of the inhabitants against our very names,’ wrote one weary EIC official. Little wonder that the British were soon being reviled in the Surat streets ‘with the names of Ban-chude* and Betty-chude† which my modest language will not interpret’.
