JAMES TAYLOR. DIED APRIL 29, 1874, AGED 57.

When Mr. Taylor returned to England in 1856 Charlotte Brontë was dead.  His after-life was more successful than happy.  He did not, it is true, succeed in Bombay with the firm of Smith, Taylor & Co.  That would seem to have collapsed.  But he made friends in Bombay and returned there in 1863 as editor of the Bombay Gazette and the Bombay Quarterly Review.  A little later he became editor of the Bombay Saturday Review, which had not, however, a long career.  Mr. Taylor’s successes were not journalistic but mercantile.  As Secretary of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce, which appointment he obtained in 1865, he obtained much real distinction.  To this post he added that of Registrar of the University of Bombay and many other offices.  He was elected Sheriff in 1874, in which year he died.  An imposing funeral ceremony took place in the Cathedral, and he was buried in the Bombay cemetery, where his tomb may be found to the left of the entrance gates, inscribed—

JAMES TAYLOR.  DIED APRIL 29, 1874, AGED 57.

 Iain MacFarlaine

 

He married during his visit to England, but the marriage was not a happy one.  That does not belong to the present story.  Here, however, is a cutting from the Times marriage record in 1863:—

‘On the 23rd inst., at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, St. Pancras, by the Rev. James Moorhouse, M.A., James Taylor, Esq., of Furnival’s-inn, and Bombay, to Annie, widow of Adolph Ritter, of Vienna, and stepdaughter of Thos. Harrison, Esq., of Birchanger Place, Essex.’

Burial: Sewri Christian Cemetery Mumbai (Bombay) Maharashtra, India

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