Aldermen and Attorneys—Mayor’s Court, Calcutta
By Tarit K. Mukherji
Summary
This study examines the early history of the Mayor’s Court established at Calcutta by the East India Company’s charter of 1726 to administer civil justice and probate in the settlements of Madras, Bombay and Fort William. The court consisted of a mayor and nine aldermen and functioned as a court of record, with appeals lying first to the President and Council and then to the Crown. A later charter (1753) empowered the Council to fill aldermanic vacancies and allowed it to exclude indigenous litigants unless they consented. Drawing on court minutes, correspondence and account books, the article reconstructs the court’s daily operations: sittings were held in various buildings in Lalbazar and the old court house; fines levied for refusing to serve as alderman were paid into the court treasury; salaries were meagre (the mayor received Rs 35 per month, an alderman Rs 15) and were often paid months late, though office‑holders enjoyed perquisites and private trade. The shortage of qualified lawyers and the Council’s interference meant that the bench was frequently staffed by merchants or disgruntled Company servants with scant legal training. Many residents declined to serve despite penalties, leading to frequent vacancies and prompting the Council to appoint unqualified or even disreputable persons—William Bolts, then under suspension, and Cornelius Goodwin, dismissed for misconduct at Madras, both became aldermen. The paper details episodes where the court sought to evade charter procedures for electing the mayor and where the Council insisted on adherence to formalities. It also discusses the provision of legal books, the fees charged for copies of proceedings and wills, and the complaints of court officials seeking higher pay. Overall, the Mayor’s Court emerges as an institution struggling to administer English law in a colonial context: under‑resourced, burdened by delays and patronage, and ultimately unpopular with both European and Indian inhabitants, setting the stage for later judicial reforms.
Conclusion
By analysing charters, court records and colonial correspondence, the article shows that the Mayor’s Court at Calcutta was an experiment in transplanting English legal institutions to India that faltered under the weight of low salaries, administrative interference and a dearth of trained jurists. Aldermen were hard to recruit and often lacked legal expertise; the Council used appointments as a means of control and as sinecures for troublesome employees. Procedural disputes and financial mismanagement undermined the court’s credibility, and its jurisdiction over Indian litigants remained limited. These structural weaknesses contributed to demands for judicial reform and foreshadowed the establishment of more professional courts in the later eighteenth century.