John Hyde

John Hyde (14 January 1738 – 8 July 1796) was a Puisne Judge on the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal from 1774 to his death. He is the primary author of Hyde's Notebooks, a series of 74 notebooks that are a trove of information for the first years of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William, the highest court in Bengal from 1774 to 1862. The originals of these are kept at the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata. Partial microfilms are held at the National Library of India, Kolkata. The digitized microfilm is available online. The originals, which vary slightly from the microfilm, were digitized in 2015 but are not yet released. Judicial Record Hyde gained a reputation as a morally upright judge in a time of general corruption in the British East India Company. While Chief Justice Elijah Impey and puisne judge Sir Robert Chambers both accepted bribes from Governor-General of Bengal Warren Hastings in return for compromising their judicial positions, Hyde refused offers. Hyde was unique among the judges in thinking that all individuals in Bengal, Indians and British alike, deserved the same rights, noting that the Supreme Court's charter called everyone residing in Bengal British subjects: “it seems to me that in this clause his majesty expressly calls all the inhabitants of Bengal, Bahar and Orissa, his subjects, which is a fact that the servants of the Company here are not willing to allow.” Hyde's Notebooks Upon joining the bench, Hyde began an ambitious project to record the trials he and his fellow judges presided over. Hyde desired his notebooks to be printed and published for the public interest but this never happened. Hyde's Notebooks comprise 22,000 pages of handwritten notes in 74 bound volumes written between 1775 and 1798. Of these, 24 were written by Hyde alone, 41 were by Hyde in collaboration with his fellow judges, Sir Robert Chambers, and Sir William Jones, and 9 were by Chambers' alone after Hyde's death. They can be divided as follows: