OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Shortland, Willoughby

​SHORTLAND, WILLOUGHBY (1804–1869), acting governor of New Zealand, born in 1804, was the son of Captain ​George Thomas Shortland [q. v.] Edward Shortland [q. v.] and Peter Frederick Shortland [q. v.] were his brothers. Willoughby was educated at the Royal Naval College, and entered the service on 9 Jan. 1818. Being gazetted a lieutenant on 18 Aug. 1828, he served in the Galatea, 42 guns, and in the following year in the Ranger, 28 guns, on the Jamaica station. On 21 March 1831 he took the command of the Skipjack, a schooner of 5 guns, and in her remained in the West Indies until June 1833. In 1839 he accompanied Captain William Hobson, the first governor of New Zealand, to that colony, which had not then been annexed by England. Landing at Auckland on 29 Jan. 1840, the British sovereignty was proclaimed, and Lieutenant Shortland appointed colonial secretary. He proceeded to Port Nicholson, Wellington, and the English living there very willingly acknowledged Queen Victoria's authority and Shortland's nomination as their police magistrate. On the death of Captain Hobson on 10 Sept. 1842, the lieutenant administered the government of New Zealand until the arrival of Captain Robert Fitzroy on 31 Dec. 1843. During Shortland's temporary government the massacre of the white men by the Maoris at Wairau took place on 17 June 1843, and in his despatches to the home government he expressed his disapproval of the conduct of the settlers, to which he attributed the massacre. This action made him unpopular, and, when a report of his nomination as governor of New Zealand was circulated, a petition was sent from Auckland praying that he might not be appointed.
On 31 Dec. 1843 he resigned the colonial secretaryship, and in 1845 became president of the island of Nevis in the Leeward Islands. Removing from Nevis, he was governor of Tobago from 10 Jan. 1854 until 1856, and then, returning to England, resided on his property, Courtlands, Charleton, Kingsbridge, Devonshire, until his death there on 7 Oct. 1869. On 1 July 1864 he had been gazetted a retired commander in the navy. He married, in 1842, Isabella Kate Johnston, daughter of Robert A. Fitzgerald of Geraldine, co. Limerick.
[Gisborne's New Zealand Rulers, 1886, pp. 33–6; Mennell's Australian Biogr. 1892, p. 416; O'Byrne's Naval Biogr. 1849, p. 1065; Rusden's Hist. of New Zealand, 1883, i. 313–48.]
G. C. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Shortall, Sebastian

​SHORTALL, SEBASTIAN (d. 1639), titular abbot of Bective in co. Meath, was born at Kilkenny. He became a Cistercian monk at Nucale in Galicia, and worked at philosophy in the seminary of St. Claudius there, and afterwards in the monastery of Mons Ramorum, where Henriquez, the literary historian of the Cistercian order, was then studying theology. Henriquez describes Shortall, whom he classes among Spanish writers, as keen-spirited, vehement in disputation, and efficacious in argument, and as one of the best poets the order had produced. Shortall wrote with ease in all the Latin metres. Many of his poems circulated in manuscript, but none appear to have been printed. The names of a few are given by Henriquez and reproduced by Harris.
Shortall, being sent on a mission to his native country, was captured by the Moors at sea. Having been redeemed, he made his way to Ireland, and died titular abbot of Bective in co. Meath on 3 Dec. 1639.
[Henriquez's Phœnix Reviviscens, Brussels, 1626; Ware's Writers of Ireland, ed. Harris.]
R. B-l.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Shortland, John

​SHORTLAND, JOHN (1769–1810), captain in the navy, born in 1769, was elder son of Commander John Shortland (1736–1803), and was elder brother of Thomas George Shortland [q. v.] He entered the navy in 1781 under his father, then employed in transport service to and from North America. He was afterwards in the Surprise, and from 1783 to 1787 in the Latona frigate in the West Indies. On his return to England in 1787 he joined the Sirius with Captain John Hunter (1738–1821) [q. v.], and in her went out to New South Wales, made the voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, and was wrecked at Norfolk Island, whence he returned to England in company with Hunter in April 1792. On 10 Oct. 1793 he was promoted to be lieutenant of the Arrogant, and in 1795 was selected by Hunter to be first lieutenant of the Reliance, in which he was going out as governor of New South Wales. As Hunter's duties detained him on shore, Shortland was thus in acting command of the ship, in which he made several voyages to the Cape of Good Hope, Tahiti, and New Zealand. He returned to England with Hunter in 1801, and having been promoted to be commander on 1 Jan. 1801, was appointed transport agent for the expedition to Egypt. In the following year he commanded the Dolphin, from which he was moved to the Trompeuse, going out to the Guinea coast, where he was promoted, on a death vacancy, to be captain of the Squirrel. On his return to England his commission as captain was confirmed, to date from 6 Aug. 1805. He was then sent out to the Halifax station, where, in February 1809, he was transferred to the Junon. In September he sailed for the West Indies, being then a hundred men short of complement, and on 13 Dec. fell in with four large frigates sailing under Spanish colours. They proved able to answer the private signals, and Shortland consequently stood towards them to gain intelligence of the enemy. But when the Junon was well within gunshot, they struck the Spanish colours, hoisted French, and poured in their broadsides. Notwithstanding the tremendous odds against him, Shortland defended his ship with the utmost gallantry, till he was carried below most dangerously wounded; the Junon, which had lost ninety men killed and wounded, was then boarded and taken possession of, but she was such a complete wreck that she was cleared out and set on fire. Shortland had both legs shattered and his left arm; he had also a severe wound in the side, and others less serious. His mangled body was taken on board one of the French frigates, and was afterwards sent, thirteen miles in a canoe under a blazing sun, to the hospital at Guadeloupe, where he died on 21 Jan. 1810, and where he was buried with military honours. He was unmarried.
[Naval Chron. xxiv. 1; James's Naval Hist. (ed. 1860), v. 47; Troude's Batailles Navales de la France, iv. 78; Navy Lists.]
J. K. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Macpherson, Duncan

​MACPHERSON, DUNCAN (d. 1867), army surgeon and writer, was appointed surgeon to the army in Madras in 1836. During 1840-2 he served with the 37th grenadier regiment in China, and published a narrative of the expedition under the title 'Two Years in China, with an Appendix of General Orders and Despatches;' the work was well received, and passed to a third edition in 1843. On his return from China he served chiefly with the irregular horse in the Hyderabad contingent, acquiring in this way a thorough insight into the manner of treatment needed by a Mahommedan soldiery. On the outbreak of the war with Russia, Macpherson was in 1855, on the strong recommendation of his former commander, Lord Gough, appointed head of the medical staff of the Turkish contingent, a force of twenty thousand of the sultan's subjects who received British pay and were placed under British officers, the latter being drawn for the most part from the Indian army. During his sojourn on the Bosphorus he prepared his 'Antiquities of Kertch and Researches in the Cimmerian Bosphorus,' London, 1857, a very handsome imperial 4to, dedicated to Lord Panmure, and containing a sketch of the history and archæology as well as of the physical and ethnological features of the country. Besides woodcuts it contains a number of highly finished and artistic coloured lithograph plates, chiefly of vessels in terra-cotta, glass, or bronze. Most of the pottery described and depicted was subsequently transmitted to the British Museum (cf. Athenæum, 1857, p. 561). Returning to India, Macpherson was at once promoted inspector-general of the medical service of Madras. This infraction of the hitherto sacred rule of seniority, together with the feverish activity of the new inspector in the performance of his duties and his large schemes of reorganisation, rendered him not a little 'repugnant to the older official class,' It was, however, generally admitted that he anticipated progress in several important departments of military sanitation. Macpherson died at Merkára, Coorg, being then honorary physician and honorary surgeon to her majesty, on 8 June 1867. At the time of his death he was about to be gazetted president of the Madras sanitary commission.
[Macpherson's Works in Brit. Mus. Library; Gent. Mag. 1867, ii. 397; Indian Army and Civil Service Lists; Allibone's Dict. of Engl. Lit.; Lancet, 13 July 1867, p. 56.]
T. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Macpherson, John (1817-1890)

​MACPHERSON, JOHN, M.D. (1817–1890), physician, younger brother of Samuel Charters Macpherson [q. v.], and son of Hugh Macpherson, professor of Greek in the university of Aberdeen, was born at Old Aberdeen in 1817, and after education at the grammar school, entered the university, and graduated M.A., and was created an honorary M.D. He studied medicine at St. George's Hospital in London, and at a school in Kinnerton Street, from 1835 to 1838. He then went abroad, to Bonn, Vienna, and Berlin, for a year. In October 1839 he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. While and in India he published 'Statistics of Dysentery,' 1850; 'Insanity among Europeans' 1853 'Report on Native Lunatic Asylums,' 1855; ‘On Antiperiodics,' 1856; and on his return ‘Cholera in its Home,' 1866; ‘Our Baths and Wells of Europe,’ 1871; ‘Annals of Cholera up to 1817,' 1884; and a privately printed 'Essay on Celtic Names.’ He believed that no drug had any effect upon cholera, and he differed from many writers in holding that cholera was observed in India as early as 1503. He travelled much in the British islands and on the continent, making the observations recorded in his books on ‘Baths and Wells.’ His last Journey was in 1859 to the south of Spain. ﬁe knew French and German well, but not Gaelic, although he was much interested in Celtic studies. His kindly disposition was manifest in his face, his conversation was learned, and, like his manners, simple and unaffected. He lived in London, in Curzon Street, and there died after a long illness, 17 March 1890.
[Obituary notice in Lancet 29 March 1890; British Medical Journal, 29 March 1896; Works; personal knowledge]
N. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Macpherson, Paul

​MACPHERSON, PAUL (1756–1846), Scottish abbé, was born of catholic parents at Scanlan on 4 March 1756, and was admittsd a student in the seminary there in June 1767, spent two years (1770-2) at the Scots College in Rome, and completed his theological course at the Scots College at Valladolid in Spain. Having been ordained priest by the Bishop of Segovia, he returned to the mission, and was stationed successively at Shenval in the Cabrach, at Aberdeen, and at Stobhall. In 1791 he removed to Edinburgh on being appointed procurator of the mission. He was sent to Rome in 1793 as agent of the Scottish clergy, and for many years he transacted with the holy see all the ecclesiastical business of the mission. In 1798 General Berthier, by order of the French Directory, took possession of Rome, whereupon Macpherson left the city and travelled through France and England. When the British cabinet was considering the practicability of rescuing Pius VI, then a French prisoner at Savona, on the Genoese coast, on English frigate was ordered to cruise off the land, and Macpherson was despatched from London with ample powers and funds to effect the escape of the pontiff. Spies of the Directory disclosed the design to the Paris government, and the attempt failed. Macpherson was imprisoned, and on his liberation sought refuge in Scotland, where he took charge of the congregation at Huntly. He went back to Rome in 1800, but again visited Scotland in 1811, after the seizure and exile of Pius VII. On the restoration of that pontiff he returned to Rome once more. Besides being agent for the Scottish vicars-appostolic, he was for some years employed in the same capacity by those of England and she by some of the Irish bishops. The Scots College had been for sometime under the control of Italian ecclesiastics, but Macpherson induced the pope to place the institution under native management, and he was himself appointed its first Scottish rector. The first students arrived in Scotland in 1820.
He was mainly instrumental in securing the most valuable of the Stuart for the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV (Quarterly Review, 1846). It was also owing to his care and foresight that many of the manuscripts of the Scots College in Paris were preserved and brought back to Scotland.
Macpherson resigned the rectorship of the Scots College in 1826 and returning to Scotland in May 1827, he erected a chapel in Glenlivet. 1n 1834, however, he ones more went to Rome and resumed the office of rector of the Scots College. There he died on 24 Nov. 1845.
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Macpherson, William

​MACPHERSON, WILLIAM (1812–1893), legal writer, born 19 July 1812, was brother of John Macpherson [q. v.] and of Samuel Charters Macpherson [q. v.] He was educated at Charterhouse and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B. A. in 1834, and M.A. in 1838. Called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1837, he published in 1841 a 'Practical Treatise on the Law relating to Infants' (Edinburgh, 8vo), which attracted notice owing to its learning and accuracy. In 1846 he went to India to practise at the Indian bar, and in 1848 was given by Sir Laurence Peel, chief-justice of Bengal, the post of master of equity in the supreme court in Calcutta. His 'Procedure of the Civil Courts of India' (Calcutta, 1850, 8vo) became at once a recognised authority, reaching a fifth edition in 1871, and his 'Outlines of the Law of Contracts as administered in the Courts of British India' was issued in London in 1860. He spent nearly two years (1854-5) in England on leave, and finally left India in March 1859. In October 1860 he was entrusted by John Murray the publisher with the editorship of the 'Quarterly Review.' He held that office till October 1867, contributing three articles to the ' Review,' viz. 'Scottish Character' (July 1861), 'The Stanhope Miscellanies' (January 1863), and 'Law Reform' (October 1864). In December 1861 he had become secretary of the Indian Law. Commission, which was appointed to prepare a body of substantive law for India, and he withdrew from literary work in 1867 in order to devote himself solely to that work. The Indian Succession Act of 1865 illustrates the value of the commission's labours, but owing to the Indian government's desire to exercise more direct control over the undertaking, the commission was dissolved in December 1870. Macpherson thereupon returned to the bar, and practised chiefly before the privy council. His useful 'Practice of the Privy Council Judicial Committee,' first published in 1860, reached a second edition in 1873. In 1874 he began reporting the Indian appeals before the privy council for the Council of Law Reporting. In June 1874 he became legal adviser to the India office, and in September 1879 exchanged that post for that of secretary in the judicial department. He retired from the India office 20 Feb. 1882. 'Memorials' by him of his brother, Samuel Charters Macpherson, appeared in 1865. He died in London 20 April 1893. He married, 9 Jan. 1851, Diana Macleod Johnston, who died in 1880, and left issue.
[Times, 24 April 1893; Brit. Mas. Cat.; private information.]
G. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Macpherson, James (d.1700)

​MACPHERSON, JAMES (d. 1700), known as the Banff freebooter, is said to have been an illegitimate son of a member of the family of Invereshie in Inverness-shire by a gipsy woman. After his father's death he joined his mother and her roving companions. For some years he defied the magistrates and lairds of the neighbourhood, but in the autumn of 1700 he, with some of his gipsy band, was captured at Keith market by Lord Braco of Kilbride. He was imprisoned in the tolbooth of Banff under an exceptionally strong guard, and was tried before the sheriff of that place on 7 Nov., on the charge of ‘going up and doune the country armed and keeping mercats in a hostile manner.’ He and an accomplice, Gordon, were sentenced to death, and were executed at the Cross of Banff during the afternoon market of Friday, 16 Nov. 1700. According to tradition, Macpherson was handsome in appearance and of kindly temper. No charge of bloodshed was preferred against him, and evidence was adduced at his trial that one of his ‘unlawful’ visits had been for the purpose of curing a sick man.
It is said that before his execution he played a ‘rant’ or dirge on his favourite violin, offered the instrument as a keepsake to any one in the crowd who would think well of him, and, receiving no response, broke it and threw it into the open grave by his side. The rant is said to have appeared in a broadside in 1701. An early version, reputed to have been committed to memory by a young woman to whom Macpherson had formed a strong attachment, was given by Buchan to Motherwell, and is printed in Hogg and Motherwell's edition of Burns (1834, ii. 178). Another copy, obviously later, appears in Herd's collection, published in 1776 (see also Hogg and Motherwell, ii. 179, and Ritson, ii. 454). Internal evidence shows that none of these versions could have been written by Macpherson, though we can readily believe that the melody, played with such dramatic circumstance, was not long without words. It suggested Burns's ‘Macpherson's Farewell,’ in which the poet has characteristically preserved the old air and the burden, almost verbatim, of the version associated with the outlaw's lover.
A curious parallel is found in the story of John Macpherson, the Leinster highwayman, the reputed composer of an Irish air called ‘Macpherson's tune’ (see notes to ‘Titus's Ballad’ in Ainsworth's Rookwood, p. 63).
[Process against the Egyptians at Banff, 1700 (Spalding Club Miscell. iii. 175); Imlach's Hist. of Banff, 1868, pp. 26–8; Cramond's Annals of Banff (New Spalding Club), i. 99; New Monthly Mag. 1821, i. 142–3, quoted in Gipsy Lore Journal, iii. 190; Chambers's Domestic Annals, iii. 233. See also Carlyle's account of his reading the ‘rant’ to Tennyson, in a letter to E. Fitzgerald, 26 Oct. 1844 (E. F.'s ‘Letters,’ 1889 i. 144 n.)]
G. G. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lonsdale, William

​LONSDALE, WILLIAM (1794–1871), geologist, youngest son of William Lonsdale by his wife, Mary, daughter of William Wagstaffe of Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire, was born at Bath on 9 Sept. 1794, obtained a commission on 4 Feb. 1812 in the 4th (King's Own) regiment, in which his two brothers were already serving, served in the Peninsular war, and obtained a clasp for the battle of Salamanca. He was also present at Waterloo and received the medal, but shortly after 1815 he retired on the half-pay of a lieutenant. Settling at Batheaston, he devoted himself to the study of geology; began by collecting fossils, numerous examples of which he presented to the Bath Literary and Scientific Institution, and showed so much talent for method and classification that he was in 1826 appointed curator of the natural history department of the Bath Museum. On 15 May 1829 he was elected F.G.S., and was shortly afterwards summoned to London as successor to Thomas Webster, the Geological Society's curator and librarian. The Wollaston fund was awarded him in 1832 in order to aid him in his investigation of the oolite districts of Gloucestershire, commenced in 1830. He resigned his office, after thirteen years' service, in 1842, when he was succeeded by Edward Forbes [q. v.]. The society was indebted to Lonsdale during his term of office for an innovation in the shape of the skilful condensation of its ‘Transactions.’ After his retirement he pursued his geological studies in various parts of the west of England. In 1846 he received both Wollaston fund and medal in recognition of his researches into the various kinds of corals. Leonard Horner [q. v.] spoke highly of the value of his work, as did Sir Henry de la Beche [q. v.] in presenting him with the fund (for the fourth time) in 1849. He died, unmarried, at his house in the City Road, Bristol, on 11 Nov. 1871, and was buried in the Arno's Vale cemetery.
Lonsdale's papers are: 1. ‘On the Oolitic District of Bath’ (Geol. Soc. Trans. 2nd ser. vol. iii. 1829). 2. ‘Report of a Survey on the Oolitic Formations of Gloucestershire’ (Proc. vol. i. 1832). 3. ‘On the Age of the Limestones of South Devonshire’ (Trans. 2nd ser. vol. v. 1840). 4. ‘Three Papers on Polyparia from America’ (Journal, vol. i. 1845). 5. ‘On Fossil Zoophytes found in the Section from Atherfield to Rocken End, Isle of Wight’ (ib. vol. v. 1848). Of these by far the most important is No. 3, which entitles Lonsdale to a place beside Murchison and Sedgwick as co-originator of the theory of the independence of the devonian system, as being of an age intermediate between that of the carboniferous and that of the silurian systems. The independent origin of the old red sandstone was first suggested by Lonsdale in 1837.
[Memoir in W. S. Mitchell's Notes on the Early Geologists connected with neighbourhood of Bath, 1872, pp. 31–9; Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxviii.; Geol. Soc. Proc. iv. 42, 43, 67.]
T. S.