page_title: John Hyde (judge)
section_title: Hyde's Notebooks
hierarchical_section_title: John Hyde (judge) / Hyde's Notebooks
caption_attribution_description: English: A page from Hyde's Notebooks
context_page_description: John Hyde 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 digitised microfilm is available online. The originals, which vary slightly from the microfilm, were digitised in 2015 but are not yet released.
context_section_description: 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:
  14 by Hyde. 1775-1783
  41 by Hyde, Chambers, and Jones. 1783-1794
  10 by Hyde. 1794-1796
  9 by Chambers. 1796-1798
caption: A page from Hyde's Notebooks in July 1781. Note the shorthand.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 60D", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.5 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2014:09:11 16:12:09", "Image ExifOffset": "206", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "864", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5343", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/25", "EXIF FNumber": "14", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF RecommendedExposureIndex": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:09:11 12:46:16", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:09:11 12:46:16", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "290241/62500", "EXIF ApertureValue": "761471/100000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "4", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "27", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "87", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "87", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "1036800/181", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "691200/119", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "3931511914", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[18, 55, 0/0, 0/0]", "EXIF LensModel": "EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II", "EXIF LensSerialNumber": "000069f50b"}