Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/220

 'a bright epoch in the annals of Madras' (Madras Weekly Mail, 4 Dec. 1890).

But the governorship ended abruptly a year before its normal term under a dark cloud, which closed Connemara's public life. It was announced from India on 8 Nov. 1890 that he had tendered his resignation, to take effect from the following March. Soon afterwards (27 Nov.) the divorce court in London heard the petition of his wife for dissolution of marriage on charges of cruelty and adultery going back to 1875. Though Bourke's pleadings denied the charge and made a counter-charge of adultery against his wife and Dr. Briggs, a former member of his staff, he was not represented at the hearing. A decree nisi was pronounced, and was made absolute on 9 June 1891. Lady Connemara and Dr. Briggs denied the counter-charge in court; they were subsequently married, and she died on 22 Jan. 1898.

Connemara handed over acting charge of the governorship to a civilian colleague on 1 Dec. 1890, and embarked for England on the 7th. He married a second wife on 22 Oct. 1894, Gertrude, widow of Edward Coleman of Stoke Park, a lady of considerable wealth; she died on 23 Nov. 1898. He died at his London residence, Grosvenor Street, after long illness, on 3 Sept. 1902, and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery. There being no issue by either marriage, the barony became extinct with his death. There is a portrait at Government House, Madras, and the chief hotel there is named after him. A caricature by 'Spy' is in "Vanity Fair" Album' (1877, plate 250).

 BOURNE, HENRY RICHARD FOX (1837–1909), social reformer and author, born at Grecian Regale, Blue Mountains, Jamaica, on 24 Dec. 1837, was one of eight children of Stephen Bourne, magistrate and advocate of the abolition of slavery, and of Elizabeth Quirk. His father had founded in Dec. 1826 the 'World,' the first nonconformist and exclusively religious journal in England. His parents left Jamaica in 1841 for British Guiana, and moved to London in 1848, where, after attending a private school, Henry entered London University in 1856, and joined classes at King's College and the City of London College. He also attended, at University College, lectures on English literature and history by Henry Morley [q. v.], whose intimate friend and assistant he afterwards became. In 1855 he entered the war office as a clerk, devoting his leisure to literary and journalistic work. He regularly contributed to the 'Examiner,' an organ of advanced radical thought, of which Henry Morley was editor, and wrote for Charles Dickens in 'Household Words.' In 1862 Fox Bourne made some reputation by his first independently published work, 'A Memoir of Sir Philip Sidney,' which showed painstaking research and critical insight, and remains a standard biography. There followed 'English Merchants' (1866); 'Famous London Merchants' (1869), written for younger readers; 'The Romance of Trade' (1871); 'English Seamen under the Tudors' (1868), and 'The Story of Our Colonies' (1869). In these books Fox Bourne traced in a popular style the rise of England's commerce and colonial expansion. In 1870 Fox Bourne retired from the war office, and with the money granted him in lieu of a pension purchased the copyright and control of the 'Examiner.' Although John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and Frederic Harrison were still among the contributors, the paper proved in Bourne's hands a financial failure, and he disposed of it in 1873 (see Reminiscences, 1911).

The next two years he mainly spent on a 'Life of John Locke,' which he published in 1876. From 1876 to 1887 he was editor of the 'Weekly Dispatch,' which under his auspices well maintained its radical independence. Fox Bourne freely criticised the Gladstonian administration of 1880-5, and his hostility to Gladstone's home rule bill of 1886 led to his retirement from the editorship.

Thenceforth Fox Bourne devoted almost all his energies to the work of the Aborigines Protection Society, of which he became secretary on 4 Jan. 1889. He edited its journal, the 'Aborigines' Friend,' and pressed on public attention the need of protecting native races, especially in Africa. One of the first to denounce publicly the cruel treatment of natives in the Congo Free State in 1890, he used all efforts to secure the enforcement of the provisions of the Brussels convention of 1889-90 for the protection of the natives in Central Africa. He forcibly stated his views in 'The Other Side of the Emin Pasha Expedition' (1891) and in 'Civilisation in Congo Land' (1893). To his advocacy 