Antecedents
Dowbiggin was the sixth child of Rev. Richard Thomas Dowbiggin and Laetitia Anna Layard. His father had translated the Bible into Sinhala, and his younger brother Hugh Blackwell Layard Dowbiggin was born in Sri Lanka. His maternal grandfather was Sir Charles Peter Layard, the Government Agent of the Western province (after whom Layard's Broadway in Colombo was named) who was himself the grandson of Gualterus Mooyaart, Administrateur of Jaffna under the Dutch United East India Company, the VOC. He was a relative of Sir Henry Austen Layard of Nineveh fame and of the naturalist Edgar Leopold Layard.
Dowbiggin was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and joined the Ceylon Police in 1901. He became Inspector-General in 1913. During Dowbiggin's tenure of office in Sri Lanka, the strength of the Force was enhanced considerably and the posts of two Deputy Inspectors General were also created. He oversaw an expansion of the Force: the number of Police stations increased, so that by 1916 there were 138 all over the island.
He also modernised the Force, introducing new techniques of investigation such as fingerprinting and photography and improving the telecommunications network for the Police as well as increasing the mobility of the Force. The analysis of crime reports became more systematic. He purchased the land on Havelock Road, Colombo, on which the Police Headquarters and the 'Police Park' playing fields are located.
It was early in his tenure that H.H. Engelbrecht, a Boer wild life officer in Yala, was unjustly jailed in 1914 for allegedly having supplied meat to the German light cruiser SMS Emden.
Facing the riot of 1915, he authorised the use of draconian measures. Anagarika Dharmapala was arrested and his legs were broken in police custody; his brother died. E. W. Perera, a lawyer from Kotte, braved mine and submarine-infested seas (as well as the Police) to carry a secret Memorial in the soles of his shoes to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, pleading for the repeal of martial law and describing atrocities claimed to have been committed by the Police led by Dowbiggin.
Read more about this topic: Herbert Dowbiggin
Famous quotes containing the word antecedents:
“The conclusion suggested by these arguments might be called the paradox of theorizing. It asserts that if the terms and the general principles of a scientific theory serve their purpose, i. e., if they establish the definite connections among observable phenomena, then they can be dispensed with since any chain of laws and interpretive statements establishing such a connection should then be replaceable by a law which directly links observational antecedents to observational consequents.”
—C.G. (Carl Gustav)