William Tippet

William Henry Tippet (1782-1824) was the Judge and Magistrate of Patna, India, from 1816 to 1824.

Biography

Tippet was born in Bombay on 21 November 1782. His father was Captain James Tippet, an artillery officer with the British East India Company, who met Tippet’s mother, Mary Mason, when he was stationed on the South Atlantic island of St Helena (c. 1770-1778). The Masons were a prominent plantation family.[1] In 1775, Tippet’s father and grandfather, Benjamin Mason, had accommodated Captain James Cook, during his second visit to the island.[2]

19th-century Patna

From an early age, Tippet pursued a career in the service of the East India Company. Aged 17 years, he served as a Cadet, then attained the ranks of Ensign (1799) and Lieutenant (1800), before leaving military service to take up a position with the Company as a Writer in Bengal in July 1803.[3]

As a youth, Tippet formed a relationship with Mussooruat Sauer Nhaunus of Tellicherry, daughter of Chovvakkaran Moosa, who was a pepper merchant from the Keyi family and, at that time, the richest man in Malabar.[4] Eventually, Tippet married Mussooruat under English law and their three ‘natural-born’ children were baptized and recognized as legitimate heirs.

In the civil service wing of the British East India Company, Tippet served in a variety of junior judicial and administrative positions; first at Tirhoot, then in the Sadr Diwani Adalat (Supreme Court of Revenue), before becoming the Judge and Magistrate of Cawnpore in 1813. His jurisdiction was extended to include Ghazipur and Benares in 1815 and Murshidabad in 1816, before he was appointed Judge and Magistrate of the City of Patna.[5]

As a Magistrate, Tippet was sympathetic to the protection and development of local economies and supported the legal interests of senior merchants of both European and Indian heritage.[6]

Tippet died at sea, aged 41, aboard the Berwickshire, during a voyage to St Helena.[7]

References

  1. ↑ A. Chaplin, A St Helena Who’s Who: A Complete Guide to the People on St Helena During Napoleon’s Captivity, (revised ed. by A. Sutton, 2014), London, 1919, pp. 23, 32, 86; T.W. Hearl, St Helena Britannica: Studies in South Atlantic Island History, (ed. by A.H. Schulenburg), London, 2013, pp. 134, 146.
  2. ↑ The Endeavour Journal of James Cook, May 1775; K. Denholm, South Atlantic Haven: A Maritime History for the Island of St Helena, St Helena, 1994, p. 9.
  3. ↑ India Office records in the British Library.
  4. ↑ Will of W.H. Tippet in the UK National Archives. J. McDonald, 'Migration as an Opportunity for Reinvention: Alfred and Margaret Rich of Gundaroo', Obituaries Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://oa.anu.edu.au/essay/18/text32361, originally published 19 November 2015, accessed 3 December 2015. Cf. A.P. Ummer Kutty, Keyi Charitram, Tellicherry, 1916, passim; A. Bulley, The Bombay Country Ships, 1790-1833, Abingdon, 2000, pp. 42; M.P. Mujeebu Rehiman, ‘Merchants and Colonialism: the Case of Chovvakaran Moosa and the English East India Company’, History Farook working paper series (August 2006), pp. 4-7.
  5. ↑ India Office records in the British Library; 1817 Bengal Obituary, p. 394 (Thomas Gentil); The India Office and Burma Office List, London, 1829, p. 17.
  6. ↑ B. Ram, Land and Society in India: Agrarian Relations in Colonial North Bihar, Chennai, 1997, p. 211.
  7. ↑ Departures from Bangal Alamanac, 1824; Accounts and Papers on East India Affairs, vol. 25, London, 1826, p. 6.
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