Sir John Strachey (5 June 1823 – 19 December 1907) was a British civil servant and writer in India who served as Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces from 1874 to 1876. He was briefly acting Governor-General in February 1872 (following Lord Mayo's assassination), before being replaced by the more appropriate Lord Napier who acted for the remainder of time until Lord Northbrook arrived.
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Life
The fifth son of Edward Strachey, second son of Sir Henry Strachey, 1st Baronet, he was born in London, England. After passing through the East India Company College, Strachey entered the Bengal civil service in 1842, and served in the North-Western Provinces, occupying a number of important positions. His brother was Sir Richard Strachey.
In 1861, Lord Canning appointed him president of a commission to investigate the great cholera epidemic of that year. In 1862 he became judicial commissioner in the Central Provinces. In 1864, after the report of the royal commission on the sanitary condition of the army, a permanent sanitary commission was established in India, with Strachey as president. In 1866, he became Chief Commissioner of Oudh, having been chosen by Lord Lawrence to remedy as far as possible the injustice done after the Indian rebellion of 1857 by the confiscation of the rights of tenants and small proprietors of land, maintaining at the same time the privileges of the Talukdars of great landlords. As member of the legislative council he introduced several bills for that purpose, which, with the full approval of the Talukdars, passed into law.