cecil beadon, born 1816
Lieutenant Governor of Bengal
Sir Cecil Beadon was educated at Eton and Shrewsbury. He entered the Indian Civil Service at the age of eighteen. After spending some years in district offices, he was appointed Under Secretary to the Government of Bengal in 1843. He was selected in 1850 by the Governor General to represent the Bengal presidency on a commission which had been appointed to inquire into the Indian postal system, and which resulted in the establishment of a uniform postage in that country, analogous to the English penny postage. He rose to become Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, a post he held during the notorious Orissa Famine. A Commission of Enquiry concluded that Sir Cecil Beadon’s Bengal government had failed totally to predict the coming event, had misled the central government, and had ‘blindly relied upon the law of supply and demand’. In addition to laying the blame at the door of individual officers, the Commission highlighted responsibilities that government held to its subjects during future periods of famine and outlined more rigorous procedures for relief provision.
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Editor’s note: One option is to present the Lives Retold collection as a celebration of all the lives included. In which case Cecil Beadon, given his delinquency in dealing with the disastrous Orissa Famine of 1866, should be excluded. Another option is to make clear that the inclusion of a life in Lives Retold is not judgmental, and is not necessarily a celebration of that life. I have decided, in a spirit of transparency, to adopt the latter approach. It seems to me that if there are shameful aspects of family members, or of the society in which they lived, it is on balance better that these are exposed for all to see rather than being hidden from view. Alex Reid, 10.2.2021.