Sir Richard Temple, 1st Baronet

Sir Richard Temple, 1st Baronet, GCSI, CIE (8 March 1826 - 15 March 1902) was an administrator in British India and a British politician.

After being educated at Rugby and the East India Company College at Haileybury, Temple joined the Bengal Civil Service. His hard work and literary skill were soon recognised; he was private secretary for some years to John Lawrence in the Punjab, and gained useful financial experience under James Wilson. He served as Chief Commissioner for the Central Provinces until 1867, when he was appointed Resident at Hyderabad. In 1867 he was made K.C.S.I. In 1868 he became a member of the supreme government, first as foreign secretary and then as finance minister.

He was made lieutenant-governor of Bengal Presidency in 1874, and did admirable work during the famine of 1874, importing half a million tons of rice from Burma to substantially bring relief to the starving. [Davis, Mike, "Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World", 2001, p.36. ISBN 9781859843826] The British government, dogmatically committed to a laissez-faire economic policy, castigated Temple for interfering in the workings of the market. He was appointed by the Viceroy as a plenipotentiary famine delegate to Madras during the famine of 1877 there. Seeing this appointment as an opportunity to "retrieve his reputation for extravagance in the last famine" [ibid, p.37.] Temple implemented relief policies that made the starvation of millions inevitable. The 'Temple Wage' as it became known, was a deliberately repugnant form of relief: hard labour, in return for which the Indians were offered less sustenance than the diet inside the infamous Buchenwald camp. [ibid, p.38.]

His services were recognized with a baronetcy in 1876. In 1877 he was made governor of Bombay Presidency, and his activity during the Afghan War of 1878-80 was untiring.

In 1880 he left India for a political career in England, but it was not till 1885 that he was returned as a Conservative MP for the Evesham division of Worcestershire. Meanwhile he produced several books on Indian subjects. In parliament he was assiduous in his attendance, and he spoke on Indian subjects with admitted authority. He was not otherwise a parliamentary success, and to the public he was best known from caricatures in Punch, which exaggerated his physical peculiarities and made him look like a lean and hungry tiger. In 1885 he became vice-chairman of the London School Board, and as chairman of its finance committee he did useful and congenial work. In 1892 he changed his constituency for the Kingston-upon-Thames (UK Parliament constituency)
Kingston division, but in 1895 he retired from parliament, being in 1896 made a Privy Councillor.

He had kept a careful journal of his parliamentary experiences, intended for posthumous publication; and he himself published a short volume of reminiscences. He died at Hampstead on the 15th of March 1902. He was twice married, and left a daughter and three sons, all of the latter distinguishing themselves in the public service.

External links

Autobiographical Memoir: [http://books.google.com/books?id=cHsBAAAAQAAJ Men and Events of My Time in India by Richard Temple]

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