Julian James Cotton (3 October 1869 – 20 June 1927) was a British civil servant, judge and historian who served in the Indian Civil Service, principally in the Madras Presidency. He is best known for compiling and annotating List of Inscriptions on Tombs or Monuments in Madras Possessing Historical or Archaeological Interest, published by the Government Press at Madras in 1905. The work documents European and Eurasian funerary inscriptions across the presidency and supplements many of them with biographical and historical notes.
Early life and education Cotton was born at Krishnagar in the Bengal Presidency on 3 October 1869, the second son of Sir Henry John Stedman Cotton, later Chief Commissioner of Assam and a Liberal Member of Parliament, and Mary Cotton, née Ryan. His elder brother, Sir Evan Cotton, later became a barrister, historian and President of the Bengal Legislative Council.
Cotton attended Sherborne School from 1882 to 1888, becoming head of the school and winning several prizes in classics. He entered Corpus Christi College, Oxford, as a scholar in 1888. At Oxford he won the Gaisford Prize for Greek prose in 1891 and the Chancellor's Prize for Latin verse in 1892. He entered the Indian Civil Service through the 1892 examination and arrived in India in 1893.
Civil service career Cotton served mainly in the Madras Presidency, initially as an assistant collector and magistrate. He was promoted through the provincial civil service and became a District and Sessions Judge in 1910, remaining in the judicial service until 1926. He also served for a period as Assistant Accountant-General of Bengal.
In 1926 Cotton was appointed Curator of the Madras Record Office, a post he held until his death the following year. A contemporary obituary in The Times, subsequently reproduced in Madras Musings, described him as an authority on the history and records of British India.
Historical work Cotton developed a particular interest in monumental and funerary inscriptions as records of colonial history. Before producing his presidency-wide compilation, he prepared a List of European Tombs in the Bellary District, published at Bellary in 1894.
His principal work, List of Inscriptions on Tombs or Monuments in Madras Possessing Historical or Archaeological Interest, appeared at Madras in 1905 as part of the Indian Monumental Inscriptions series. It brought together inscriptions from cemeteries, churches and isolated monuments throughout the Madras Presidency and from several European colonial communities. Cotton included translations of inscriptions in foreign languages and added notes identifying people, families and places mentioned on the monuments.
Cotton continued gathering corrections and supplementary material after the book appeared. Following his death, the Government of Madras purchased these papers from his executors in 1928. They were later incorporated, together with material from other sources, into the substantially revised two-volume edition edited by B. S. Baliga and published in 1945–46.
His other historical writings included studies of the Swiss Regiment de Meuron, the Italian soldier and administrator Paolo Avitabile, and the British artist George Chinnery. He also contributed articles and verse to the Calcutta Review and The Pioneer.
Personal life and death Cotton married Luisa Maria Raffaella Ricciardi at Naples on 28 December 1901. He died suddenly at Madras on 20 June 1927, aged 57, and was buried the same day at St George's Cemetery.
A memorial tablet to Cotton was subsequently placed by his Indian Civil Service colleagues in St Mary's Church at Fort St. George. The British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia has noted the association between Cotton's own burial and his best-known work recording the graves and memorials of others in southern India.
Selected works The Story of Husain and the Mohurram Celebration in the East (Oxford, 1891) List of European Tombs in the Bellary District, with Inscriptions Thereon (Bellary, 1894) His Majesty's Regiment de Meuron (Calcutta, 1903) List of Inscriptions on Tombs or Monuments in Madras Possessing Historical or Archaeological Interest (Madras, 1905) General Avitabile (1791–1850) (Calcutta, 1906) A Book of Corpus Verses (Oxford, 1909)
References
External links Cotton's List of Inscriptions on Tombs or Monuments in Madras at the British Library