The presence of gold in Kolar had been known for centuries if not millennia, but large-scale mining had been out of the picture at the time. Neither was Lavelle the first Westerner to try his luck for gold. According to Dr S Srikumar in his book Kolar Gold Field: Unfolding the UntoldBritish prospectors were first attracted by a report in the Asiatic Annual Register of 1804, but none had met with any success. Lavelle started out by scouting for minerals in the Kolar area. In an 1873 application, he mentioned finding three locations with auriferous or gold-bearing rock strata. By 1875, Lavelle had finally secured prospecting rights in the region.

The search for gold was soon to prove arduous and expensive. Lavelle’s efforts seem to have won him some renown at this stage. An article published in the Sunday Times, an Australian paper, in 1925, reviews a novel that was modeled after his struggles. The Times supplies this following description of Living Dangerously by FE Penny – “a famous and ardent geologist is tempted in his search for gold to explore the workings of the old gold fields of Southern India… the description of Indian life and mining conditions is (sic ) highly descriptive.”

A statue of Paul Harris at Lavelle Road. (Express photo by Jithendra M)

Lavelle could not go it alone, however – Dr Srikumar stated that by 1877 he had transferred his lease rights to members of the banking syndicate Arbuthnot and Co, as well as Major-General George de la Poer Beresford (by his surname, an Anglo- Irish aristocrat who would have had the funds to invest in such a project.) It was at this point that modern mining truly took off at the Kolar Gold Fields and went on until 2001, by which point the cost of extracting gold was judged to have fell behind the profits.

The fortunes of Lavelle and his fellow gold hunters seem to have waxed and waned over the years, with their efforts finally bearing fruit around the mid-1880s. Robert Elliot noted in 1898 that, “so disappointing were the results obtained that all were practically closed in 1882, except the Mysore mine, which was working to a small extent… The company began to get gold about the end of 1884, and the prospect improved so much that the Nundydroog mine in May, 1885, was enabled to raise money on debentures, and so to again carry on work. If the shareholders of the Mysore company had not persevered, it is almost absolutely certain that the whole of the Kolar gold field would have been permanently abandoned. This is just one of those cases which cheer the sinking hopes of shareholders, and attract vast sums of money to gold mines.”

While Lavelle had made enough of a mark that the Bangalore authorities named a road after him, he did also leave another mark on the city in the form of his family home not far from Lavelle Road –Oorgaum House, named after one of the locations at Kolar where shafts were excavated. After his family, the house passed to one Deshmukh Shama Rao, and then to the family of Peter George D’Souza, who went on to serve in the government of Mysore State in various capacities. The building was held by D’Souza’s family until 1988, and an apartment complex bearing the same name now stands at the location.