The colonial despatches of Vancouver Island and British Columbia 1846-1871
Shaw-Lefevre, John George
A graduate of Eton College and a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Shaw-Lefevre
was called to the bar in 1825. Moving in whiggish circles, he joined the Political
Economy Club in 1820, redrew county constituency boundaries in preparation for the
Reform Act of 1832, and became a Poor Law Commissioner in 1834. In 1848, Lord John Russell appointed him deputy clerk of parliaments, a position in which he signed a request
of the House of Lords for a Copy of the Correspondence between the chairman of the Hudson's Bay Company and the
Secretary of State for the Colonies, relative to the Colonization of Vancouver's Island. He was knighted in 1857, but only after he had distributed a printed memorandum of
his official services.