Francis Burgess

Burgess was born in 1793, the son of Bridget, (née Scott) and Francis Burgess of St. Martin's parish, Leicester.[1][2]

He joined the 54th Regiment aged 18, as an ensign, serving in Holland in 1813, and at the Battle of Merxem, where he was wounded.[2] He was then commissioned as a lieutenant.[1] Just before the Battle of Waterloo, he was added to General George Johnstone's staff at Braine-le-Comte, and as a result received the Waterloo Medal.[2] Placed on half-pay in 1817, he took up agriculture in Warwickshire, then trained in law, becoming a member of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, and being called to the bar in 1835.[2]

Birmingham Police Act, 1839

Burgess began work as a revising barrister in Northamptonshire.[2] On 1 September 1839 he was appointed—under a special act of parliament, the Birmingham Police Act[3]—as the first police commissioner for the (then) borough of Birmingham,[2][4] reporting directly to the Government in London, at a salary of £900 a year.[5] He developed innovate techniques for policing the borough; he introduced its first mounted patrols, and deployed plain-clothes officers at events where pickpockets were likely to operate.[6]

On 12 August 1842 a new Police Act transferred responsibility for the police to Birmingham Town Council.[7] Burgess was succeeded by Richard Stephens, as the first Superintendent of the Birmingham Borough Police.[5]

Burgess was then appointed chief police magistrate of Van Diemen's Land, based at Hobart, on the recommendations of Sir Robert Peel and Sir James Graham; he succeed Captain Matthew Forster.[1][2] The appointment was announced in the London Gazette on 19 May 1843.[8] He sailed, with his wife and family, from Sheerness on the barque Asiatic, arriving in Hobart on 23 September.[1][9] At the time, Tasmania had a large population of criminals, due to Transportation.[1] Upon arrival he was appointed to the Van Diemen's Land Legislative Council,[2] and was gazetted a member of the island's executive council in October 1843.[1]

He was appointed a judge in the criminal court of Norfolk Island in June 1846, but by September had returned to Hobart due to ill health.[1] The end of transportation resulted in a June 1854 proposal to abolish his position as police magistrate. This duly happened in August 1857,[2] and he was awarded a pension of £170, whereas his salary had been £760.[1] He also lost his automatic seat on the recently-renamed Tasmanian Legislative Council, but was returned in October 1856 by election,[2][10] representing the electoral division of Cambridge[1] as an independent. In November 1857, he was offered a position as serjeant-at-arms, which he declined.[1] He resigned his legislative council seat upon becoming a stipendiary magistrate at Richmond in 1859, retiring to his home nearby, Belmont, in March 1862.[1]

Burgess was married to Amelia, née Husbands, in 1818.[2] She and several of their six children accompanied him to Tasmania. They included:[1][2]

• Ellen (1821–1908), an artist.[11]
• Murray (1824?–1906) inspector of schools, secretary to the Council of Education, Shakespearean scholar, elocutionist and theatre critic[12]
• Gordon Walter Haines (1833?–1876) surveyor of the Tasmanian Lake district[13]

His oldest son Francis Jacques, a Captain in the 74th Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry, was killed in the Indian Rebellion of 1857.[2]

Burgess died at Belmont on 24 February 1864;[2] his funeral took place in Hobart on 1 March.[14] Two other daughters predeceased him.[2] Amelia died on 14 September 1881.[1]