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BIGGE, John Thomas.
Probate copy of Commissioner Bigge's will [d. 1843].
York, 1840.
Manuscript in ink on parchment, 525 x 690 mm, with probate documents and seal; in fine condition, original folds.
Original probate copy of Commissioner Bigge's final will of 1840 (made three years before his death), here probated, signed and sealed in York in 1845.
An austere and difficult figure, Bigge had died alone in London following an accident at the Grosvenor Hotel; he was buried as his will here shows that he required, 'without ceremony or superfluous expense'.
John Thomas Bigge had been one of the most controversial visitors to New South Wales in the early colonial period, effectively bringing down Macquarie's government when he played Sir John Kerr to Macquarie's Whitlam during the colony's greatest and grandest early expansion. Bigge's Commission of Enquiry into the transportation system proved in fact a systematic London-promoted assault on Macquarie's administration of New South Wales that ultimately forced the governor's resignation.
Bigge was also sometime Chief Judge of Trinidad as well as Commissioner of Enquiry to the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope. He died a man of some means, making bequests of about twenty-five thousand pounds in cash as well as properties in Ludgate Hill and Little Bridge Street, London. His will shows his connection to an elite band of colonial administrators, with cash bequests to some of his former colleagues including the former governor of Antigua, and one of the judges of Trinidad. To his sister-in-law Mrs Hanway Bigge he leaves 'the Mahogany Press that was made for me in the island of Mauritius'.
Of particular interest is his bequest to his friend Lord Colborne of Berkeley Square of a 'picture which I caused to be drawn of the native dog of New South Wales'. Who did he cause to make the picture? And was the specific bequest of a picture of a dingo to be a wry joke from beyond the grave? The dingo had been known in England from the 1790s when Governor Phillip had arranged for a live specimen to be delivered to the Earl of Salisbury at Hatfield House.
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