Early Career

Mutty Lall Seal was born in 1792 (Bengali year 1198) in a suvarnabanik family and little is known about his early years except that his father Choyton Churn Seal was a cloth-merchant and was reputed to have helped in capturing a notorious robber, Mohun. After his father’s demise, he lived under the guardianship of Baboo Beer Chand Seal. Mutty Lall completed his elementary school in Martin Bowles’s school and at Baboo Nityananda Sen’s school. Kissory Chaund Mitter writes that ‘Mutty Lall had an aptitude for arithmetic, and delighted in figures. He also wrote a fine hand, and was proud of his English and Bengali calligraphy’ (Mitter 1993:6). Little else is known of his early life except that he married at seventeen and visited Benares and other places with his father-in-law.

He started his career in straitened circumstances and later worked as the Customs Darogah of Ballykhal. Later he managed the property of his cousin, the widow of Baboo Komul Lochan Mullick and subsequently, started his own business venture by trading in bottles and corks for beer importers like Mr Hudson who sold the most popular brand of beer in those times.