Alfred Chichele Plowden

A carte-de-visite portrait of Alfred Chichele Plowden (1844-1914).

Plowden was born in India on 27 October 1844, the son of Trevor John Chichele Plowden. Originally intended for a career in the Indian Civil Service, at Oxford, he later confessed, he never did a stroke of work more than he was actually obliged so the prospects of an Indian career were instead handed over to a younger brother. Plowden was sent to Jamaica to serve as Private Secretary to his uncle, Sir John Peter Grant, the governor of the island. According to Plowden’s obituary in The Times (10 August 1914), he left Jamaica ‘with impaired health’ after two years. On his return to England, he read for the bar, eventually becoming a magistrate, at first on the Oxford circuit and then later (from 1888) in London. In 1893, at his own request, he was transferred to Marylebone Court, where he remained for the rest of his career. He ‘frequently expressed the view that there was no other Court in London which offered a greater variety either “of cases or of human characters”.’

In 1883 he married his cousin Evelyn Foster, daughter of General Sir Charles Foster. The marriage produced three children.

Alfred Chichele Plowden died, aged 69, on 8 August 1914 at 37 Lexham Gardens, Kensington. He left an estate valued at £1115.

Photographed by G.W. Davis of Kingston, Jamaica.