Joseph Hume - Medical career, Political career, Political campaigns, Legacy

British radical politician, born in Montrose, Angus, E Scotland, UK. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University, and in 1797 became assistant surgeon under the East India Company. After returning to England (1808), he sat in parliament (1812, 1819–55), where his arguments for reform included the legalizing of trade unions, freedom of trade with India, and the abolition of army flogging, naval impressment, and imprisonment for debt.

Joseph Hume (January 22, 1777 - February 20, 1855) was a Scottish doctor and politician, born in Montrose, Angus, Scotland.

Medical career

He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and moved to India in 1797.

His knowledge of chemistry helped him provide the administration to recover damp gunpowder in 1802, on the eve of Lord Lake's Maratha war.

Between 1808 and 1811 he travelled around England and Europe and in 1812 published a blank verse translation of The Inferno.

Political career

In 1812, he purchased a seat in Parliament for Weymouth, Dorset, England, and voted as a Tory. When the parliament was dissolved the patron refused to return his money, and Hume brought an action to recover part of it.

In 1818, soon after his marriage with Miss Burnley, the daughter of an East India Company director, he was returned to Parliament as member for the Border burghs, Borders, Scotland.

Political campaigns

From the date of his re-entering Parliament, Hume became the self-appointed guardian of the public purse, by challenging and bringing to a direct vote every single item of public expenditure.

He brought about the repeal of the laws prohibiting the export of machinery, and of the act preventing workmen from going abroad.

He was conspicuous in the agitation raised by the so-called Orange plot to set aside William IV of the United Kingdom in favor of Ernest Augustus I of Hanover (1835 and 1836).

Legacy

A memorial of Hume was published by his son Joseph Burnley Hume (London, 1855). Another son, Allan Octavian Hume, a renowned ornithologist, also went into the Indian Civil Service and was involved in much political activism during his career especially on behalf of India, for example he founded the Indian National Congress.