William George Maxwell

Sir (William) George Maxwell KBE , CMG (born June 9, 1871 in Melakka , † August 22, 1959 in Shoreham, Sussex, England) was a British colonial administrator in British Malaya and the Straits Settlements . George Maxwell was the eldest son of William Edward Maxwell , who held the position of High Commissioner in Malaya and Governor of the Straits Settlements.

Life

William George Maxwell was born on June 9, 1871, the eldest of six sons of Governor William Edward Maxwell and Lillias Grant, b. Aberigh-Mackay born; probably in Melakka. At the age of 11 he was awarded the Royal Animal Welfare Medal for rescuing a drowning animal from the port of Guernsey. From 1885 to 1890 he studied at Clifton College in Bristol.

George Maxwell joined the Perak government as a junior civil servant in 1891. He was promoted to Assistant District Magistrate and Registrar of Courts in the Kinta Valley , Perak. He was also assistant secretary of the government of Perak, tax officer in Larut , land registry officer and chief of the mountain inspectorate in northern Perak and acting head of administration for Selangor , Negeri Sembilan and Perak .

On August 23, 1902, he married (Florence) Evelyn Stevenson; the couple had two sons.

In 1904 he was transferred to the Straits Settlements as an administrative officer and was acting arbitrator at the Court of Requests in Singapore.

Part-time law studies and various posts as magistrate in Malaya paved the way for him to be admitted to the bar in 1906. In the same year he got the post of district officer of Dinding, today's Pulau Pangkor and Solicitor General for Thailand. On July 9, 1909, Kedah became part of the British Empire as a result of the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 ratified by Great Britain and Thailand . Maxwell was appointed British Adviser for Kedah from 1909 to 1915 and a second time from 1918 to 1919. He was also the British Resident of Perak from 1919 to 1921 and from 1921 to 1926 Chief Secretary of the Federated Malay States .

Georg Maxwell died of heart failure on August 22, 1959 at Southlands Hospital, Shoreham, Sussex.

Life's work and honors

On November 29, 1929 Maxwell opened the Sultan Idris Training College in Perak and made it the highest educational institution of the time, which was exclusively reserved for Malays. The SMK Maxwell (abbreviation (Malaysian) for Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Maxwell ; German: Maxwell School) in Kuala Lumpur and the "Maxwell Hill" in Taiping still reminds of his commitment to the education of the Malays . In 1924 he was accepted as Knight Commander in the Order of the British Empire and was henceforth allowed to use the title "Sir".

See also

• List of British residents in Perak

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} OxfordDNB: Maxwell, Sir (William) George (1871–1959) ( Memento of January 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ); Accessed January 9, 2014
2. ^ Family tree of the Maxwell family ; Accessed January 9, 2014
3. ↑ http://newspapers.nl.sg/Digitised/Article/straitstimes19090722-1.2.79.aspx (different content)

Remarks

1. ↑ Original British title: Collector of Land Revenue
2. ^ Original British title: Registrar of Titles
3. ↑ Original British title: Warden of Mines
4. ↑ Original British title: Acting Senior Magistrate
5. ↑ After Raffles left Singapore in 1823, John Crawfurd replaced the previous jurisdiction with a Court of Request and a Resident's Court . While the Court of Requests dealt with minor civil matters, all other cases were heard personally by Crawfurd in the Resident's Court .

predecessor	Office	successor
-	British advisor to Kedah 1909–1915 (1st term)	Sir Littleton Edward Pipe-Wolferstan
Sir GA Hall	British adviser to Kedah 1918-1919 (2nd term)	Sir Malcolm Stewart Hannibal McArthur
Sir Reginald George Watson	British resident in Perak 1919–1921	Sir William James Parke Hume