Frederick John Shore (31 May 1799 – 29 May 1837) was a civil servant and judge who worked in the East India Company service in India. He was a son of John Shore, 1st Baron Teignmouth (1751–1834). Unusual for the period, Shore was openly critical of East India Company rule in India. He published under the pen name "A friend to India" in the India Gazette, a Calcutta periodical.
Biography[edit | edit source]
Shore was the second son of John Shore, 1st Baron Teignmouth and Charlotte née Cornish. He joined the Bengal Civil Service in 1818 and was a Civil & Sessions judge at Fatehgarh, Farrukhabad in 1832 and from 1836 was Civil Commissioner and Political Agent of the Sagar and Nerbudda Territories. He married Charlotte Mary Cornish of Devonshire, daughter of his mother's brother, in 1830 and they had three children. His daughter Louisa Sara Floyer (1830–1909) was involved in introducing knitting and needlework into girls' education at the elementary school level in Lincolnshire.[1]
India[edit | edit source]
Shore is best known for his notes on English administration in India under the title Notes on Indian Affairs published in two volumes. In it he was outspokenly critical of English administration. He noted the economic condition of the people: "But the halcyon days of India are over; she has been drained of a large proportion of the wealth she once possessed, and her energies have been cramped by a sordid system of misrule to which the interests of millions have been sacrificed for the benefit of the few." .... "The gradual impoverishment of the people and country, under the mode of rule established by the British Government, has hastened their (old merchant princes') fall." He was critical of English ignorance of native languages and considered the judicial system to be a mockery of justice.[2] Shore wore Indian ("mussalman") clothes to court which led to a government order being issued against his practice.[3][4] In 1822 he was posted Joint Magistrate and Assistant Collector to Dehra Dun. He suppressed a gang of freebooters in Saharanpur and in the skirmish received two cuts on his chest.[5][6] In 1823 he had convict labour build roads around Dehra Dun. At Fatehgarh he had a treadmill to grind corn which was powered by jail labour. The mill house was outside the jail premises but the shaft of the treadmill passed through the wall. This experiment in 1832 which costed Rs 1087 for the government was declared a failure.[7]
Captain Mundy described him in 1827 as “A tall handsome man with a long beard, and dressed in Mussalman costume. A great shikarri, the verandahs and rooms of his house filled with stuffed animals. He had two tame bears which sat either side of him at meals, and ate their food out of wooden bowls.”[7] Shore was a keen naturalist who collected bird specimens and John Gould examined his manuscript notes and drawings of birds from India. Gould noted in his Birds of Asia that "but for whose premature death the ornithology of India would have been far better known to us"[8] About 195 of watercolour plates of the birds and notes issued as an appendix to Latham's birds are in the Blacker Wood Library.[9][10] He spent his summers in Dehra Dun and hunted in what is now Mussoorie. The woodpecker Dinopium shorii was named after him by Nicholas Aylward Vigors who saw a specimen exhibited at the Zoological Society of London through Frederick's brother C. J. Shore.[11]
Shore died at Spence's Hotel in Calcutta.[12] He is buried in the North Park Street Cemetery, Calcutta.[13]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Cornish, Vaughan; Baigent, Elizabeth (reviser) (2004). "Floyer, Ernest Ayscoghe (1852–1903)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33185.
- ↑ Naoroji, Dadabhai (1901). Poverty and un-British rule in India. London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co. pp. 41–43.
- ↑ Cotton, Evan (1927). "The Editor's Note Book". Bengal Past and Present. 34 (1): 136–147.
- ↑ Thompson, George (1840). "Oppressive taxation of British Indian Subjects". Present state of British India: report of a lecture. pp. 1–4.
- ↑ Walton, H.G. (1911). Dehra Dun. A Gazetteer. District Gazetteers of the United Provices of Agra and Oudh. Volume I. Allahabad. pp. 184–191.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ↑ Woodruff, Philip (1957). The Men who ruled India. The Founders. London: Jonathan Cape. p. 290.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Wallace, C.L. (1934). Fatehgarh Camp 1777-1857. Lucknow. pp. 130, 152.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ↑ Gould, John (1883). The Birds of Asia. Volume 6. p. 74.
- ↑ Shore, F.J. MS. appendix to Latham's Birds with original paintings.
- ↑ Wood, Casey A. (1931). An introduction to the literature of vertebrate zoology. McGill University. p. 130.
- ↑ Vigors, N.A. (1832). "[Meeting notes]". Proceedings of the Committee of Science and Correspondence of the Zoological Society of London (1): 175.
- ↑ "The Hon. F.J. Shore". The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, Australasia. 24: 149–150. 1837.
- ↑ Wilson, C.R., ed. (1896). List of inscriptions on tombs or monuments in Bengal. p. 96.