Meston - the formation of a Civil Servant

In the 1980's James Meston (QC 1996), the 3rd Baron Meston, gave to the Archives of the Centre of South Asian Studies over 40 books belonging to his grandfather, James Scorgie Meston (12 June 1865 – 7 October 1943)
Sir James S. Meston (1st Baron Meston) was a Member of the I.C.S., posted to N.W. Provinces and Oudh, 1885; Financial Secretary, 1899-1903; Financial Secretary to Government of India 1906-12; Lieutenant-Governor, United Provinces 1912-18; Finance Member 1918-19; Chairman, Committee on Financial Adjustments between Provinces and Centre 1920.  November 1919 he became the Baron Meston of Agra and of Dunnottar, Kincardineshire and published Nationhood for India, 1931 held at Archive MES 22.

Tucked into the Indian Civil Service List for 1885 (Archive MES 38), with Meston’s pencil annotations,

Archive MES 38

is a pamphlet with the syllabus for the Civil Service of India examination held July 1885 for candidates selected in 1883,

Archive MES 38a

including Languages according to posting, Law, History and Geography of India, Political economy and Natural Science. There is also a note under the heading Riding : “Candidates who have failed at the First and Second Examinations to satisfy the Commissioners of their ability to ride will be allowed a third trial at the time of their Final Examination”.
In this final examination James Scorgie Meston came 8th out of 28 candidates having taken papers in Hindi, Hindustani, Sanskrit and Zoology and some of the set texts he studied form part of the donation, including The Sakuntala in Hindi edited by Frederic Pincott, London : Wm. Allen, 1876 (Archive MES 42), Hindi Reader edited by Fitzedward Hall, Hertford : Stephen Austin, 1870 ; for the Persian paper, John T. Platts' translation of The Gulistan or Rose Garden of Sa'di, London : Wm. H. Allen, 1876 (Archive MES 46); for the Hindustani (as a second vernacular Paper) Bagh o Bahar edited by Duncan Forbes, London : Wm H. Allen, 1873 (Archive MES 47) and for Paper 2 on Indian Law, the penal code printed in H.A.D. Phillips Manual of Indian criminal law. Calcutta : Thacker, Spink, 1883. (Archive MES 39).

In the course of his career, James, 1st Baron Meston received various presentation volumes including The History of the Taj by Md. Moin-Ud-Din, Agra : Moon Press, 1905 (Archive MES 30)

The growth of currency organisations in India by Alakh Dhari, Bombay Chronicle Press, 1915 (Archive MES 13)

Inscription reads
To The Hon'ble Sir James Meston
from the author
Feby 1915

and the autobiographies of Nawab Shah Jahan Begam and Nawab Sultan Janan Begam of Bhopal

Archive MES 11 and 25) 

Shah-Jahan Begum, ruler of Bhopal (1838-1901)
Raja Deen Dayal & Sons, photographer

A listing of the Meston donation can be found by going to iDiscover selecting Advanced Search, then South Asian Studies from the drop down Library menu, Classmark from the Field drop down menu, then entering Archive MES next to Contains.

The Hutton Donation to the University of Cambridge Centre of South Asian Studies

Book-plate of John Henry Hutton

In 1980 Patrick Hutton son of John Henry Hutton, 1885-1968, I.C.S. Assistant Magistrate and Collector, East Bengal and Assam 1909 and Census Commissioner, Government of India 1929, gave 13 books to the Centre of South Asian Studies archives, many of which have his father’s bookplate. They range from well-used dictionaries of Hindustani, Bengali, Urdu and Sanskrit, to guides to birds and wildlife, to Notes on walking round Shillong. This small 87 page publication (Archive HUT 4) by W. Allsup, published 1934, records where safe drinking water may be found for hikes which could take up to 8 hours. Another publication (Archive HUT 11) : Hobson-Jobson : a glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical and discursive  by Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell was reprinted by Oxford University Press in 2013 as Hobson- Jobson : the definitive glossary of British India.


The South Asian Studies Library holds various publications by John Henry Hutton including volumes of the 1931 Census of India G(54):31, his study of the Angami Nagas : with some notes on neighbouring tribes. Bombay : Indian Branch, Oxford University Press, 1969. (541.1):397, with the 1921 edition held at Archive JE 16 and Archive ST 1, and at Archive JE 17 The Sema Nagas, London : Macmillan, 1921

The St Catharine’s College Society Magazine of 1968 has a lengthy obituary of Professor John Henry Hutton C.I.E., D.SC. who died 23rd May 1968. Excerpts follow : 
John Henry Hutton joined the Indian Civil Service in 1909, at the time of the disturbances which followed the partition of Bengal and of the Morley-Minto reforms. He served until 1936, through a period of intense activity, of fundamental change and of constant unrest; and he was created C.I.E. for his active service in the Kuki Operations.
When he retired he took with him to Radnorshire a knowledge and understanding, and a scholarly status, which was unusual even in the Indian Civil Service at a time when much notable work on the historical and sociological problems of their districts was coming from the gifted men whom India attracted to that service.
Hutton's period of service on the Burmese border had given him an opportunity to study the Naga tribes in depth and to write his two pioneering anthropological studies,
The Angami Nagas and The Serna Nagas.
His subsequent compilation of the Report on the Census of India, in 1933, confirmed his status as an anthropologist of the first quality, who combined an imaginative understanding of the realities of eastern social life with a shrewd scepticism of generalizations and a mastery of the techniques of social survey. He had been awarded the Rivers Memorial Medal and had been elected president of the Royal Anthopological Institute in 1929, and his work had been acknowledged by awards from the Royal Society of Arts, the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and the Anthropologische Gesellschaft of Vienna. He was awarded the Degree of D.Sc. at Oxford (a distinction about which he was always typically and modestly silent in Cambridge) and in 1938 he was appointed to give the Frazer Lectures in that university [and] became a Fellow of St Catharine’s College Cambridge...When the war intervened. Hutton moved into college as a resident Fellow (with his adoring retriever!) and immediately became a mainstay of the wartime college. He secured permission from the University to act as Bursar of the College, and became a devoted and invaluable college officer. Always enthusiastic, well-informed and curious, he shared the duties, the hardships and the amenities of Cambridge with the architects, the medicos and the service men who were drafted into residence, and, lacking pupils, he not only managed his land in Radnorshire with the same care as he gave to his bursarial duties and accepted office as Sheriff of that county, but laid the foundations of two scholarly books which he published when peace brought an end to restrictions :  Caste in India [which] confirmed his mastery of the complexities of his chosen subject [and] Pictures of St Catharine's College. [In] 1950 he retired again to Radnorshire.

Full obituary pages 24-26 of the Society Magazine including a tribute reprinted from the Times