William Dunkin (judge)
Irish lawyer, and judge in India
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Life
Dunkin was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1753, as the eldest son of John Dunkin of Bushfoot, County Antrim.[2] He was later described as being from Clogher, County Antrim.[3] He served as High Sheriff of Antrim in 1777.[4] Although he had inherited an estate, he encumbered it with debt, and went to Calcutta to practise as a barrister.[5]
In October 1781, Dunkin was mentioned as on the way to India in a letter from Edmund Burke to Lord George Macartney, two of his friends.[6] There he was a friend of William Hickey.[7] He lived a bachelor life, sharing accommodation with Stephen Cassan, another Irish barrister.[5] In 1788, he set off to go to England in search of a judicial appointment in Calcutta,[8][9] sailing to Europe in December on the Phoenix under Captain Gray.[10]
Dunkin returned to Bengal aboard the Phoenix in August 1791.[11] He had been appointed to the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William and was knighted in March of that year.[12][13][14] The appointment was later attributed to the influence of Henry Dundas.[15] Dunkin had in fact obtained a reluctant support for it from Lord Thurlow. His senior colleague on the court, Robert Chambers, did not welcome it, regarding Dunkin as suspect;[7] further Dunkin and Hickey were allies in opposition to Chambers.[16] Hickey's accounts of Chambers in his memoirs, in relation to Dunkin on the court, have been called partisan and misleading, in particular in relation to a bazaar case where John Hyde was brought from his sickbed in 1796 as a supporting vote by Chambers against Dunkin.[17]
Dunkin resigned from the post in 1797, being replaced by John Royds.[18][19] He had a house in Portman Square, London,[20] where Thomas Reynolds knew him as one of a set of wealthy returnees from India;[21] and died at The Polygon, Southampton in 1807.[1]
Works
When Sir William Jones died in 1794, Dunkin wrote a Latin epitaph, used on his tomb in Calcutta.[22][23][24] An English paraphrase was later made by Eyles Irwin.[25]
Family
Dunkin married Elizabeth or Eliza Blacker (1739–1822), daughter of William Blacker (1709–1783), in 1764.[26][27][28] Their eldest daughter Letitia married Sir Francis Workman Macnaghten, having a large family, among them William Hay Macnaghten.[29][30] When Dunkin clashed with William Burroughs, attorney-general in Bengal from 1792, Francis Macnaghten tried to challenge Burroughs to a duel, and then to have him disbarred.[31] Through the marriage, the Macnaghtens acquired the Dunkin family house at Bushmills.[32]
Of Dunkin's other children, his daughter Jane married Richard William Wake, son of Sir William Wake, 8th Baronet,[33] and his daughter Rachel married John Bladen Taylor, the Member of Parliament for Hythe, as her second husband, the first being George Elliott of Bengal.[34][35] The youngest daughter, Matilda, married Valentine Conolly, son of William Conolly.[36][37]
Hickey mentions two sons. One, Edward, came to Bengal with his father in 1791, in his late teens but suffered from fits.[11] According to Hickey, he returned to Europe and died young.[38] He also makes Captain John Dunkin (John Henry Dunkin) of the 8th Light Dragoons a brother of Letitia.[39]