Sir Adam Bittleston (12 September 1817 – 18 January 1892) was a British-born Indian judge who served as an acting chief justice of Madras High Court.
Early life and education He was the son of Thomas Bittleston, editor of The Morning PostMirror of Parliament for the second session of the eleventh parliament of Great Britain and Ireland in the fourth year of the reign of King William IV, appointed to meet 3 February 1834, vol. III, ed. John Henry Barrow, 1834, p. 2510 and an official assignee of the Birmingham District Court of Bankruptcy and his wife, Ann. He was named after his paternal grandfather, surveyor Adam Bittleston, of Maryport, Cumberland (now Cumbria).The County Families of the United Kingdom, fifth edition, Edward Walford, Spottiswoode & Co., p. 91
Bittleston was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School until 1834, and was called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1841.
Career Bittleston practised on the Midland Circuit and from 1850, was a revising barrister. In 1858, he was appointed a puisne judge at the Supreme Court of Judicature at Madras and therefore, created a Knight Bachelor. After the Indian High Courts Act 1861, Bittleston switched to the new established Madras High Court and served as acting chief justice, in 1866 and 1867. He retired in 1870, and returned to England.
Personal life In 1844, he married Rebecca Ann, eldest daughter of George Hastings Heppel, of Princes Street and Mansion House Street, London, an actuary and former paper mill owner,Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, vol. 10, 1863, p. 83 who had also made a fortune as a fruiterer supplying to public dinners.The Gentleman Magazine, collected vol. XXIII, "Additions to Obituary", June 1845, p. 666 Bittleston died in 1892, at Weybridge. Their children included Adam Henry Bittleston, George Hastings Bittleston, John Pattison Bittleston, and Thomas George Bittleston.List of Carthusians 1800 to 1879, ed. W. D. Parish, Charterhouse School, Farncombe & Co. (Lewes), 1879, p. 22 Colonel George Hastings Bittleston, D.S.O., C.B.E., of Ashleigh, Whitchurch, Devon, late of the Royal Artillery, was father of Mary Katharine, who married Major-General Charles Fullbrook-Leggatt, C.B.E., D.S.O., M.C.Debrett's Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage and Companionage, ed. Patrick Montague-Smith, Kelly's Directories, 1963, p. 1695
References