When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Up for sale the "Colonial Treasurer of Hong Kong" Robert Montgomery Martin Clipped Signature.
ES-3908D
Robert Montgomery Martin (c.
1801 – 6 September 1868), commonly referred to as "Montgomery
Martin", was an Anglo-Irish author and civil servant. He served as Colonial Treasurer of Hong
Kong from 1844 to 1845. He was a founding member of the Statistical Society of
London (1834), the Colonial Society (1837), and the East India
Association (1867).
Robert
Martin was born in Dublin, Ireland, into a Protestant family,
the son of John Martin and Mary Hawkins; and trained as a doctor.
About
1820 he went out to Ceylon, under the
patronage of Sir Hardinge Giffard, a
friend of his father. Travelling onwards to the Cape of Good Hope, where he arrived in June 1823; he joined
the expedition Fitzwilliam Owen,
bound for Delagoa Bay. Martin was
temporarily appointed assistant surgeon, serving also as botanist and
naturalist on the south-east coast of Africa, Madagascar, and Indian Ocean islands.
On
10 November 1824 Martin left the expedition at Mombassa, and by way of Mauritius made his way back to the Cape. Later he set
sail for New South Wales returning
to India around the end of 1828. He lived there for a year, before sailing back
to England in 1830. Martin became a writer. According to his own account in
1840 he had been studying colonial questions for ten years. He published fifty
thousand volumes on India and the colonies. In 1838 he was assigned an office
in Downing Street, and in a
year brought out his work on the Statistics of the Colonies of the British Empire, compiled
from official sources, but without official support. In 1840 he founded and for
two years edited December 1837 he presented a petition to the House of Commons for an amended
colonial administrative department. In 1839, as a member of the court of
the East India Company, he was
active in promoting the appointment of the commission which sat in 1840 on the
East Indian trade. Martin was a prominent witness. In January 1844 Martin was
appointed treasurer of the newly acquired island of Hong Kong, where he was
also a member of the legislative council. He continued to write and was in poor
health. In May 1845 he disagreed with the governor about raising revenue
from opium and on being refused six months' leave, resigned in
July 1845. In his reports he insisted that Hong Kong was as a British colony
doomed to failure.
After
making unsuccessful efforts to induce the Secretary of State to reinstate him,
Martin returned to a literary life, near London. In 1851 he went to Jamaica on a mission to report on the affairs of two
mining companies operating there. Martin married Jane Avis Frances Keith in
1826. She eloped with Dr. John Sheridan (1805–1858) and emigrated to South
Australia, where they were important colonists. In 1847 the marriage was
dissolved by Parliament, and he married Eliza Barron, later as Eliza Phillips known in bird welfare.
ABOUT 
