Early Life
Charles Bullen Hugh Mitchell was born on the 25
th of October 1836 in
Pembroke in Wales, the eldest of five children. His father,
Hugh Mitchell, being in the Royal Marines was perhaps stationed at the
dockyards there. His mother,
Constance Bullen, was the grand-daughter of John Bullen, Surgeon-General of the British naval force. Things therefore seemed set for Charles to follow a well-worn family path into the navy, and this he did, joining the Royal Navy School.
Career
Aged 16,
Charles left school and entered the Royal Marines as an officer (2nd lieutenant
1) in 1852. He saw service in the Baltic campaigns in 1854-56, aged 18. His career progressed with a serious of ever more illustrious appointments overseas, particularly in the Caribbean and then later Africa and then even later in the Far East:
- August 1868: Colonial Secretary of British Honduras (now Belize)
- 1870 and again in 1874: Administrator of British Honduras
- 1876: promotion to Major and repeated appointment as Administrator of British Honduras
- 1877: Receiver General for British Guiana, then in November, Colonial Secretary for Natal
- 1878: promotion to Lieutenant-Colonel whereupon he retired from the Royal Navy
- 1880: awarded the C.M.G
- 1881: appointed Acting Governor of Natal
- 1883: awarded the K.C.M.G
- 1885: re-appointed Acting Governor of Natal
- 1886: appointed Governor and High Commissioner of Western Pacific in Fiji
- 1888: appointed Governor of the Leeward Isles
- 1889: appointed Governor of Natal
- 1894: appointed Governor of the Straits Settlements (now Singapore)
- 1895: awarded the G.C.M.G
Family life
In 1862, around the time of his promotion to Captain,
Charles Mitchell married
Fanny Oakley Rice, the daughter of
William McPherson Rice, a famous shipwright and therefore probably well known to Charles by reputation, if indeed the Rices were not actually family friends of the Mitchells through their shared naval connections. Charles and Fanny's only son
Hugh was born on the 24
th of May 1863 in
Chelsea.
Through Fanny Curtis Mitchell (the grand-daughter of Charles & Fanny) and her daughter Pamela (my grandmother) an enormous amount of letters and notes from Fanny and Charles' times in Belize and Natal have been preserved and I am slowly working on indexing and transcribing them. The following are some extracts which I will add to through time as I work my way through the material.
Belize
More biographical material to come:
- Privations of tropical life
Natal
More biographical material to come:
- Zulu wars, Iswandlana
- Lord Chelmsford, Sir Bartle Frere
- Sidney Thompson, their nephew
- Fanny's illness
In 1889, four years after the death of Fanny (from ovarian cancer), Charles re-married to Eliza Welldon, who was actually Fanny's first cousin. They had no children.
Death
Charles Bullen Hugh Mitchell died on the 7
th of December 1899 in
Singapore (or as it was then called, the
Straits Settlements). The cause of death was noted as "paralysis" though it seems from family letters that he actually had a stroke or series of strokes. He was buried in
Bukit Timah Cemetery in Singapore. His gravestone was removed in 1970 with the intention of installing it at Freemason's Hall; plans are afoot to restore the headstone and place it in from of the Hall with a plaque setting out a brief description of his life (as of Aug 2020).
Sadly, Charles's only son Hugh died just two years later, in India.
Footnotes
[1] The Royal Marines, although part of the Navy, use the same rank structure as the Army, hence the entry point for an officer was 2nd Lieutenant, rather than Warrant Officer or Midshipman as it would be in the Navy.