Talk:Robert Pashley

Untitled
Pashley working for his government? Pashley makes reference to the Royal Geographic Society in his forward to Travels In Crete. Is it possible that this trek into Ottoman-occupied territory was underwritten by the British government in order to get a glimpse into, even a quasi-military reconnaisance of, a rival empire? Does someone out there know more about Pashley, his family, and their connections to the British military? Etherdave (talk) 05:26, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Data from DNB
Pashley, Robert (1805–1859), lawyer and traveller, the son of Robert Pashley of Hull, was born, probably at York, on 4 September 1805, and was educated at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, under a Mr Williams. He was admitted at Trinity College, Cambridge, on 3 May 1825, and was elected to a scholarship in 1828. He took a double first class in 1829, and was elected a fellow of Trinity in the following year. In 1832 he proceeded MA, and, as travelling fellow of Trinity, undertook in 1833 a tour in Greece, Asia Minor, and Crete. Through the influence of Sir Francis Beaufort, he received from the Admiralty a free passage in the vessels employed in the Mediterranean survey. On his way home he spent some time in Venetian archives preparing an appendix to his travels which appeared in 1837, in two volumes, as Travels in Crete. Contemporaries judged the work to be scholarly and attractively written, but unfortunately a great part of the impression, together with Pashley's library and collections of antiquities, was destroyed in the fire at the Temple in 1838.

Pashley was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1825 and the Inner Temple in 1837. He was called to the bar in 1837 and obtained a large practice on the northern circuit. He acquired so great a reputation as a settlement lawyer, that the act for regulating appeals, which gave the court the power of amendment, was known as ‘the act for the better suppression of Pashley’. In 1851 he became QC, and was elected a bencher of the Inner Temple. In 1852 he was an unsuccessful candidate for parliament both at York and at King's Lynn. He published works on pauperism in 1852 and 1854. To try to set the poor law on a more rational geographical footing, he advocated the removal of the law of settlement and the raising of two-thirds of the money needed by a national levy on property. From 1856 to his death he was assistant judge of the Middlesex sessions. He died after a short illness, at his home, 16 Manchester Square, London, on 29 May 1859 and was buried in Kensal Green cemetery. Nothing is known of his wife, but he had a son Robert Edmund (1857–1878).

Richard Garnett, rev. Elizabeth Baigent Sources  GM, 3rd ser., 7 (1859), 191–3 · Venn, Alum. Cant. · Boase, Mod. Eng. biog. · private information (1895) · CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1859) · d. cert. Wealth at death  under £16,000: probate, 8 July 1859, CGPLA Eng. & Wales  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.69.78.19 (talk) 21:15, 20 November 2011 (UTC)