Charles Hay Cameron
Encyclopedia
Charles Hay Cameron was a jurist. He was married to the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer. She became known for her portraits of celebrities of the time, and for photographs with Arthurian and other legendary themes....

.

Early life

He was the son of Charles Cameron
Charles Cameron
Charles Cameron may refer to:* Charles Cameron , wrote Who Is Guru Maharaj Ji?* Charles Cameron , Scottish architect who worked in Russia...

, governor of the Bahama Islands, by Lady Margaret Hay, daughter of the fourteenth Earl of Erroll
Earl of Erroll
The Earl of Erroll is an ancient title in the Peerage of Scotland. It was created in 1453 for Sir William Hay.The subsidiary titles held by the Earl of Erroll are Lord Hay and Lord Slains , both in the Peerage of Scotland. The Earls of Erroll also hold the hereditary office of Lord High Constable...

. His grandfather, Donald Cameron, was the younger son of Dr. Archibald Cameron. Charles Hay Cameron erected a monument to his great-grandfather in the Savoy Chapel. It was injured by a fire in 1864, when Mr. C L. Norman, Cameron's son-in-law, replaced it by a painted window.

Barrister

Cameron was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1830. He was a disciple of Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism...

. He was employed upon various commissions. His report upon "judicial establishments and procedure in Ceylon", the result of a mission with Colonel Colebrooke, is dated 31 January 1832. He was also a commissioner for inquiring into charities, and prepared a report upon the operation of the poor law
Poor Law
The English Poor Laws were a system of poor relief which existed in England and Wales that developed out of late-medieval and Tudor-era laws before being codified in 1587–98...

s in April 1833.

India

By the act of 1833 a fourth member was added to the Supreme Council of India (previously the Council of Bengal), and a law commission was constituted, one member of which was to be appointed from England. Cameron was the first member so appointed, and went to India in the beginning of 1835. In 1843 he was appointed fourth member of council, and became president of the Council of Education for Bengal, of which he had been a member from his arrival in India. Cameron took an important part in the work of codification begun by Macaulay
Macaulay
-Surname:*Macaulay , an English-language surname with multiple etymological origins .-Given name:* George Macaulay Trevelyan, English historian...

, and was Macaulay's chief adviser and co-operator in the preparation of the penal code (Trevelyan, Macaulay, i. 427. 443, 463). He took a great interest in the introduction of English education among the natives of India. A public meeting of natives was held at Kolkata
Kolkata
Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...

 on 22 February 1848, upon his departure for England, to thank him for his exertions, and request him to sit for his portrait.

His views were explained in an "Address to Parliament on the duties of Great Britain to India in respect of the education of the natives and their official employment, by C. H. Cameron" (1863), in which he advocated a more liberal treatment of the Indian population.

Return to England

Cameron took no further part in active life after his return to England. He lived successively in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, Putney
Putney
Putney is a district in south-west London, England, located in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is situated south-west of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....

, and at Freshwater
Freshwater
Fresh water is naturally occurring water on the Earth's surface in ice sheets, ice caps, glaciers, bogs, ponds, lakes, rivers and streams, and underground as groundwater in aquifers and underground streams. Fresh water is generally characterized by having low concentrations of dissolved salts and...

, in the Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...

.

Visit to Sri Lanka

In 1875 he went to Ceylon
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

, where his sons were established. After a visit to England in 1878, he died in Ceylon on 8 May 1880.

Cameron was a man of cultivated intellect, well read in classical and modern literature, and intimate with many distinguished men of his day, especially Sir Henry Taylor, Alfred Tennyson, and H. T. Prinsep. He married, in 1838, Julia Margaret Pattle, the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. They had five sons and a daughter, Julia (died 1873, married to Charles Lloyd Norman).
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK