Lepel Griffin
British administrator and diplomat (1838–1908)
Sir Lepel Henry Griffin , KCSI (20 July 1838 – 9 March 1908) was a British administrator and diplomat during the British Raj period in India. He was also a writer.
Early life
Lepel Henry Griffin was born in Watford , England on 20 July 1838. His father, Henry, was a clergyman in the Church of England and his mother was Frances Sophia. His mother had been married previously and thus Griffin had ten half-siblings as well as two full sisters. [1]
Griffin was educated briefly at Harrow School , having also attended Malden's Preparatory School , Brighton . He did not go to university but was privately tutored for the competitive examination for entry to the Indian Civil Service . He sat and passed those examinations during 1859 and 1860, being ranked tenth among the 32 successful candidates. [1]
Career
He reached India in November 1860 and was posted to Lahore . [1] The mannerisms of Griffin had attracted attention in India from the time of his arrival there, and in 1875 Sir Henry Cunningham satirised him in the novel, Chronicles of Dustypore , [1] in which he was depicted as the character Desvoeux . [2] [3] Katherine Prior, the author of his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , describes that, "He was a dandyish, Byronic figure, articulate, argumentative, and witty. Anglo-Indian society was at once both dazzled by and scornful of his languid foppishness and irreverent tongue". [1]
In 1880 he became Chief Secretary of the Punjab. [4] He was sent as a diplomatic representative to Kabul , at the end of the Second Afghan War . [5] He was then Governor-General's Agent in Central India and Resident in Indore ; and Resident in Hyderabad .
He collaborated with the pioneer Indian photographer Lala Deen Dayal . [6]
After his return to the United Kingdom, he was Chairman of the East India Association. [7] He was also for several years a Chairman of the Imperial Bank of Persia, and in late 1902 received the Grand Cross of the Order of the Lion and the Sun from the Shah of Persia. [8]
He was a proponent of an Anglo-American union, he addressed a meeting on 15 October 1898 in Luton , on the subject of the suggested Anglo-American union, Col. John Hay , the former United States Ambassador at London attended the meeting. [9]
Death
Griffin died at his home – 4 Cadogan Gardens , Sloane Street, London – on 9 March 1908 after suffering from influenza . He was cremated and his ashes were interred at a private chapel owned by Colonel Dudley Sampson in Buxhalls , Haywards Heath , Sussex. His wife remarried, while the younger of his two sons, Sir Lancelot Cecil Lepel Griffin became the last political secretary of British India. [1]
Bibliography
-
The Panjab Chiefs
. Lahore: T. C. McCartney-Chronicle Press. 1865.
-
The Panjab Chiefs
. Vol.
1. Updated by Charles Francis Massy (New revised
ed.). Lahore: Civil and Military Gazette Press. 1890.
{{ cite book }}
: CS1 maint: others ( link ) -
The Panjab Chiefs
. Vol.
2. Updated by Charles Francis Massy (New revised
ed.). Lahore: Civil and Military Gazette Press. 1890.
{{ cite book }}
: CS1 maint: others ( link )- Revised as Chiefs and Families of note in the Punjab (1909)
-
The Panjab Chiefs
. Vol.
1. Updated by Charles Francis Massy (New revised
ed.). Lahore: Civil and Military Gazette Press. 1890.
- The Law of Inheritance to Chiefships . Lahore: Punjab Printing Company. 1869.
- The Rajas of the Punjab (1873)
- Famous monuments of Central India (1886)
- The Great Republic (Second ed.). London: Chapman and Hall. 1884.
- Ranjit Singh . Rulers of India series . Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1892. [10]
Notes
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Griffin, Sir Lepel Henry (1838–1908)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi : 10.1093/ref:odnb/33576 . (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- ↑ Cunningham, Henry Stewart (1875). The Chronicles of Dustypore, a Tale of Modern Anglo-Indian Society . Vol. 1. London: Smith, Elder and Co.
- ↑ Cunningham, Henry Stewart (1875). The Chronicles of Dustypore, a Tale of Modern Anglo-Indian Society . Vol. 2. London: Smith, Elder and Co.
- ↑ Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series by George Robert Aberigh-Mackay – Full Text Free Book (Part 3/3)
- ↑ Abdur Rahman Khan – 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
- ↑ Life Sketch (Lala Deen Dayal 1844 – 1905)
- ↑ "The Maharaja Scindia and the East India Association". The Times . No. 36853. London. 22 August 1902. p. 8.
- ↑ "Court News". The Times . No. 36951. London. 15 December 1902. p. 10.
- ↑ The Anglo-American Feeling – Sir Lepel Henry Griff... The New York Times: PDF
- ↑ "Review of Rulers of India.—Ranjit Singh by Sir Lepel Griffin" . The Athenaeum (3384): 313. 3 September 1892.
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