George Chardin Denton

Sir George Chardin Denton, KCMG (seated in the middle) on a tour of Loqui and Kommbo in June 1904

Sir George Chardin Denton , KCMG (born June 22, 1851 in Stour Provost , Dorset , † January 9, 1928 in Chigwell Row , Essex ) was a colonial administrator and colonial governor of the British Empire .

career

Denton was born in 1851 as the only surviving son of the Reverend Robert Abercrombie Denton and his wife Mary Frances Matilda Denton (nee Wroughton) in the village of Stour Provost in Dorset and completed his education at rugby college, among others . In 1869 he joined the 57th Infantry Regiment under General Charles Richard Fox and was given his own company in 1878, before he began working for the British Colonial Service in 1880 and took up the position of police chief of the Caribbean island of St. Vincent . He was also one of the first commissioners to deal with the use of police forces in Barbadosbusy. In 1982 he represented St. Vincent at the Telegraphic Conference in Barbados and administered the government of St. Vincent on three other state occasions in the years 1885 to 1888, where he appeared from 1886 to 1888 as Colonial Secretary of St. Vincent. Subsequently, he was installed as Colonial Secretary of Lagos and administered or represented the local government on various state occasions before he was named Lieutenant-Governor of Lagos under Sir Cornelius Alfred Moloney in 1889 and held this office until 1890. The following year he was accepted as a Companion in the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG). When he was appointed colonial administrator of Gambia in 1900, he was knighted as Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) and from then on carried the suffix "Sir".

During this reign there was also a dispute between the Marabouts and the Soninkes , two rival Muslim tribes fighting for the ownership of rice fields. Denton then used the two commissioners Sitwell and Silva, as well as a police sergeant and ten other police officers to settle the degenerating dispute. Due to a betrayal by the leader Dari Bana Dabu , both commissioners, the police sergeant and five police officers were insidiously murdered. After Denton arrived in Gambia in 1901, it was decided to send a punitive expedition under Colonel HE Brake into the disputed area, which finally put down the revolt. Some of the ringleaders managed to flee and joined the predatory leader Fodi Kabba in the Senegalese medina, which was on French territory and where he had been taken a few years earlier. Subsequently, in cooperation with the French government in Senegal, the settlement of Medina was destroyed, Fodi Kabba was killed and three ringleaders were handed over to the British government in Gambia. These were then sentenced to death and executed in a larger village not far from the spot where the two commissioners and their entourage had previously been killed. From then on there was peace in Gambia, which continues to this day.

Denton, who was promoted from Administrator of Gambia to Governor and Commander-in-Chief by the newly crowned King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Edward VII on March 9, 1901 , proved to be a competent and popular governor, who was both popular with the population and made considerable advances in trade. He served as Governor of Gambia until the end of 1911, when he was replaced by Sir Henry Lionel Galway , KCMG, DSO . At the end of his service, he made several trips from Bathurst to Plymouth , including in August 1909 when he entered England with the SS Karina , which was launched in 1905 and sunk by torpedoes on the crossing from Sierra Leone to Liverpool in 1917 . He traveled once more in July 1910 with SS Lungeru from Bathurst to Plymouth. Following his work there, Denton wrote the publication "Twenty-three Years in Lagos and the Gambia." Journal of the Royal African Society , published in 1912 in the Royal African Society's journal African Affairs, which was twelve pages.

Sir George Chardin Denton was an avid hunter, marksman and fisherman and was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Zoological Society . Denton married in July 1879 Jean Margaret Alan Stevenson (* 1849), daughter of Alan Stevenson, CE, FRS, also a member of the Royal Society , in the political parish of St. George Hanover Square in the metropolitan area of London . His wife died 21 years later on July 20, 1900 in Lagos, Nigeria. The marriage resulted in the daughter Julia Maud Mary "Lulu" Denton, who was born in Gambia in 1882 and died in 1968 in Headington , a suburb of Oxford . Denton himself died on January 9, 1928 at the age of 77 in the village of Chigwell Row, Essex; the funeral took place on January 12th at St. Clement's Church in Oxford.

Today in Banjul, the Bathurst at that time, the 210 m long Denton Bridge , which connects the Gambian mainland with St. Mary's Island , is named after George Chardin Denton. The girder bridge that crosses Oyster Creek was built in its current form in 1986, replacing a bridge that was built in 1915 and renewed in 1959, which is still a few meters north of the current location in a rather desolate condition. Immediately after the bridge is the Denton Bridge Resort.

literature

• George C. Denton: "Twenty-three Years in Lagos and the Gambia." Journal of the Royal African Society , publication in the journal African Affairs (1912; pages 129 to 140)
• Arnold Hughes, David Perfect: Historical Dictionary of the Gambia , Scarecrow Pr Inc, 2008.

Web links

Commons : George Chardin Denton  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• George Chardin Denton at Halhed Genealogy (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Report of March 12, 1901 (English), accessed June 27, 2015
2. ↑ ^{a b} Denton Bridge , accessed June 27, 2015
3. ↑ Denton Bridge Resort (English), accessed June 27, 2015
4. ^ Twenty-three Years in Lagos and the Gambia. at africabib.org, accessed June 27, 2015

predecessor	Office	successor
Sir Cornelius Alfred Moloney	Lieutenant-Governor of Lagos 1889–1890	Sir Gilbert Thomas Carter
Sir Robert Baxter Llewelyn	Administrator and later governor of Gambia 1900–1911	Sir Henry Lionel Galway