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The 1851 census gives his birth place as East Budleigh and the Church Register records the birth as “John Bird, son of John and Ann Hines Jan 22nd 1777”.   Hine trained as a doctor and was employed by the East India Company (EIC).  The Mamluk rulers of Iraq were not enamoured of their Ottoman overlords and therefore tried to cultivate economic links with Britain.  They allowed the EIC to set up an agency and factory in Bagdad and an agency in Basra in about 1763 under the control of the Bombay Presidency.  

Hine was attached as Medical Officer to the Company’s residency in Bagdad for fifteen years until 1818 (1).  Hine was described in one account as being “a man of science and a great skill in his profession” (2).   One of the problems he encountered was plague and this account by the Resident of the EIC agency showed him to be a very humane doctor: 

“I will take this opportunity to mention, that in three years of plague at Bagdad, Mr. John Hine, the surgeon of the residency, never refused his assistance to any pestiferous person who required it, or would receive it,-that neither he nor I shut ourselves up, and that in respect to myself, passing one day on horse-back through the porte cochere of my house, a person, with the plague evidently upon him, clasped my knees, and besought me, for the love of God, that I would direct Mr. Hine to give him his assistance.  I relieved myself from him as quick as possible, ran back into the house, and by Mr. Hine's advice, jumped, clothes and all, into a large cistern of cold water, which was always full, for the purpose of supplying the hot baths” (3). 

The Resident, Sir Harford Jones (Brydges), moved to another post in 1804 and wasn’t replaced till 1808.  Hine was Acting Resident for much of the interim.  While he was in Iraq he seems to have been a collector of Assyrian and Babylonian artefacts and some them (e.g. an important Seal Cylinder from 1st dynasty Ur) went to the British Museum (4). 

In 1818 Hine returned to India to take up an appointment in August as surgeon with the Bombay Medical Establishment (5).  He resigned from this post in September 1821.  He eventually returned to East Devon because he appears in the earliest available Exmouth Directory (1830) living at 17 Beacon Hill, and is listed as a voter in the East Budleigh Parish between 1832 and 1843 because he owned land there called Whitstile which was leased to Thomas Carter.  The voters’ lists give his abode as Exmouth.  

In 1844 he was living in Louisa Terrace, Exmouth.  Soon after he moved to Lee Ford House in Knowle and appears there with five servants in the 1851 census as an unmarried man, retired from the EIC Medical Service.  He also had a gamekeeper, John Cann, whose name appears in the Devon Game Lists between 1852 and 1858. According to Land Tax Records the previous owner and occupier of Leeford was Gilbert Cowd and he died in the summer of 1844. It is likely therefore that Hine moved in at that time. Elizabeth Cowd, Gilbert’s widow, seems to have been Hine’s sister because there was a marriage in October 1811 in East Budleigh between Elizabeth Hine and Gilbert Cowd. I suspect she was living with Hine after her husband’s death as she is recorded in the 1850 White’s Directory as resident at Leeford (as is John Hine). For some reason she is not recorded in the 1851 census for the house (or anywhere else); she died in 1867. 

Lee Ford House is a Queen Anne House which was extended during the 18th and 19th centuries, the pillars and two storey Palladian wings being added in about 1840 (6).   Further internal plaster work was done in 1867 and, as Hine had died before then, it would appear he had no hand in any of the major building work (although it is interesting but presumably a coincidence that the plaster work is similar to some in the India Office). 

John Hine died in the early part of 1859 and he left a considerable amount of money to various local and national charities.  This transcription of his obituary in The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Review of January – June 1859 shows the extent of his largesse: 

“At Leeford-house, Budleigh Salterton, aged 82, John Hine, esq, late of the Bombay Medical Establishment, and for many years attached to the Residency at Bagdad.  He has bequeathed to the Devon and Exeter Hospital £10,000; to the Deaf and Dumb Asylum £3,000; to the Blind Asylum £3,000; to the North Devon Infirmary £6,000; to the Exeter Penitentiary £2,000; to the Exeter Dispensary £1,000; to the Exeter Eye Infirmary £1,000; to the East Budleigh and Budleigh Salterton National Schools £1,000; to the poor of the parish of East Budleigh £1,000; to the Benevolent Fund of that parish £1,000.  These different societies form only a portion of those amongst whom he has judiciously divided his wealth, his object being to benefit his fellow-creatures in a spiritual and temporal sense; not forgetting the medical profession, of which he was a member, by bestowing on the Medical Benevolent Fund £3,000, and the Royal Medical Benevolent College £3,000.”

One can only assume that to have amassed such a large fortune Hine must have been indulging in the usual practice for EIC employees of trading on their own account.  This activity presumably largely took place during his posting at Bagdad which was a hive of commercial activity although he may well have retained trading links after his return to England as many ex EIC men did. 

Compiled and Researched by Roger Lendon, © 2011 

(1) Asiatic journal and monthly miscellany – Vol. 17 1835 Page 65

(2) “Journey through Asia Minor, Armenia, and Koordistan, in the years 1813 and 1814” Macdonald Kinnier. London

(3) “An account of the transactions of his Majesty’s mission to the Court of Persia in the years 1807-1811”. Sir Harford Jones Brydges. Vol.1.

(4) “The seal cylinders of western Asia” William Hayes Ward. The Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1919

(5) The Asian Journal and monthly miscellany Vol. 5  March 1818    Asian Intelligence -Bombay

(6) http://www.leeford.co.uk/id7.html 

137 BS-B-00053 Biography any