Thomas Southorn

Thomas Southorn (right) with his wife

Sir Wilfrid Thomas Southorn KCMG , KBE ( Chinese  修 頓  /  修 顿 ; * August 4, 1879 , † March 15, 1957 ) was a British colonial official who represented the British monarch in the British colonies of Hong Kong and Gambia .

Life

Wilfrid Thomas Southorn attended Warwick School and Corpus Christi College at the University of Oxford .

He served in the colonial administration of Ceylon from 1903 to 1926 . In his career he rose to the position of treasurer of the colony and harbor master. He was then appointed Colonial Secretary in Hong Kong , where he worked from 1926 to 1932. During this time he was appointed deputy governor three times.

His first and only post as governor he received on October 22, 1936 in Gambia. He held this until March 23, 1942; then he was until 1946 liaison officer of the colonial authority. All of Southorn's plans to improve the colony and Protectorate of Gambia were in the context of the global depression. After 1939, the Gambia's economy grew when the Gambia was an important base during the Second World War. The situation between 1940 and 1942 was particularly tense, as the surrounding French colony of Senegal was controlled by the Vichy regime .

Southorn was married to Lady Bella Sidney Southorn , the sister of Leonard Woolf and sister-in-law of the famous novelist Virginia Woolf . Bella Southorn wrote (also under the name Bella Sidney Woolf ) a variety of books and articles about Gambia. In 1952 she published, among other things, The Gambia: The story of the Groundnut colony . Southorn died on March 15, 1957.

The Southorn Playground in Wan Chai , Hong Kong is named after him.

literature

• Arnold Gailey, Harry A. Hughes: Historical Dictionary of the Gambia. The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1999, ISBN 0-8108-3660-2 .

predecessor	Office	successor
Sir Arthur Frederick Richards	Governor of Gambia 1936–1942	Hilary Rudolph Robert Blood