Colonial Despatches

Vane Jadis joined the Colonial Office as a junior assistant clerk in 1827.1 During the period 1846-1867, he served as assistant clerk and worked in the North American Department under Clerk Arthur Blackwood until his retirement.2 With a description as a “clerk in the Colonial Office,” his name appears as an insolvent debtor in a series of London newspapers from 1837 until 1861.3 Jadis probably procured a clerkship in the War Office for his son, who, pressed and harassed to death for money in 1861, forged a bill to obtain cash that was not met (paid when it matured). For this crime he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to four years prison.4

• 1. JC Sainty, Office-Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 6, Colonial Office Officials 1794-1870, (London, 1976), 36-51.
• 2. Ibid.
• 3. London Gazette, (14 April 1837), 800;The Jurist Vol. VI-Part II, (1843), 247; London Gazette, Part 3, (London, 1850), 3249; The London Gazette, (22 January 1861), 276.
• 4. Teasdale Mercury, (24 December 1861).