Sir Oliver Beauchamp Coventry St John (21 March 1837 – 3 June 1891) was an administrator in

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

, who took a close interest in the zoology of the region. He served as the

chief commissioner A chief commissioner is a commissioner of a high rank, usually in chief of several commissioners or similarly styled officers. Colonial In British India the gubernatorial style was chief commissioner in various (not all) provinces (often after be ...

Baluchistan Balochistan ( ; bal, بلۏچستان; also romanised as Baluchistan and Baluchestan) is a historical region in Western and South Asia, located in the Iranian plateau's far southeast and bordering the Indian Plate and the Arabian Sea coastline. ...

for ten years and was involved in the establishment of a telegraph network to India.

Early life

Oliver St John was born on 21 March 1837 in

Ryde Ryde is an English seaside town and civil parish on the north-east coast of the Isle of Wight. The built-up area had a population of 23,999 according to the 2011 Census and an estimate of 24,847 in 2019. Its growth as a seaside resort came af ...

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight ( ) is a county in the English Channel, off the coast of Hampshire, from which it is separated by the Solent. It is the largest and second-most populous island of England. Referred to as 'The Island' by residents, the Isle of ...

. His father was Captain Oliver St John of the

Madras Army The Madras Army was the army of the Presidency of Madras, one of the three presidencies of British India within the British Empire. The presidency armies, like the presidencies themselves, belonged to the East India Company until the Government ...

and his mother was Helen Young (widow of Henry Anson Nutt). He studied at the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

's Military College at Addiscombe (1855–57), and joined the

Bengal Engineers The Bengal Engineer Group (BEG) (informally the Bengal Sappers or Bengal Engineers) is a military engineering regiment in the Corps of Engineers of the Indian Army. The unit was originally part of the Bengal Army of the East India Company's B ...

on 12 December 1856..

Career

After serving in the

United Provinces of Agra and Oudh The United Provinces of Agra and Oudh was a province of India under the British Raj, which existed from 1902 to 1921; the official name was shortened by the Government of India Act 1935 to United Provinces (UP), by which the province had been ...

in the public works department, St John volunteered for work in

Persia Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

under Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Stewart of the Royal Engineers. This mission was mainly to establish a telegraph line between Persia and India including a cable in the

Persian Gulf The Persian Gulf ( fa, خلیج فارس, translit=xalij-e fârs, lit=Gulf of Persis, Fars, ), sometimes called the ( ar, اَلْخَلِيْجُ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Khalīj al-ˁArabī), is a Mediterranean sea (oceanography), me ...

and a land cable line for telegraphic link to

Bosporus The Bosporus Strait (; grc, Βόσπορος ; tr, İstanbul Boğazı 'Istanbul strait', colloquially ''Boğaz'') or Bosphorus Strait is a natural strait and an internationally significant waterway located in Istanbul in northwestern T ...

. Stewart and his brother Champain had already worked on a survey in Turkey. St John worked on the expedition under Captain Murdoch Smith, RE. He later took charge of the line from

Teheran Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...

Bashahr Bushahr, also spelt as 'Bashahr' and 'Bussahir' or 'Bushair' was a Rajput princely state in India during the British Raj. It was located in the hilly western Himalaya promontory bordering Tibet in the northern part of colonial Punjab region. ...

(March 1866), and during this time a second telegraph line was added. He went home in May 1867 and he was then sent to Abyssinia to organize telegraph lines for the war. This line was 200 miles from the coast and the work led to his promotion. Towards the end of 1868 he returned to Persia and he remained here till 1871 with a break in September 1869 when he married Janette, daughter of James Ormond, of Abingdon, Berkshire. In October 1871, St John was sent to Baluchistan for the survey of the Perso-Kelat frontier. He returned to England in October 1872 and worked on preparing maps at the India Office. These maps were based on longitudes of the Persian telegraph stations fixed in co-operation with General James Walker of the Indian Trigonometric Survey, Captain William Pierson, RE, and Lt Stiffe, IN. St John published his notes in the ''Narrative of a Journey through Baluchistan and Southern Persia'' (1876). He returned to India in 1875 and became principal of the

Mayo College Mayo College (informally Mayo) is a boys-only independent boarding school in Ajmer, Rajasthan, India. It was founded in 1875 by Richard Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo, who was the Viceroy of India from 1869 to 1872. This makes it one of the oldest Pub ...

Ajmer Ajmer is one of the major and oldest cities in the Indian state of Rajasthan and the centre of the eponymous Ajmer District. It is located at the centre of Rajasthan. It is also known as heart of Rajasthan. The city was established as "''Aj ...

. After August 1878 he became part of the staff of Sir

Neville Chamberlain Arthur Neville Chamberlain (; 18 March 18699 November 1940) was a British politician of the Conservative Party who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. He is best known for his foreign policy of appeasemen ...

's mission to

Kabul Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. Acco ...

. He then became chief political officer to the Kandahar

Field Force A field force in British and Indian Army military parlance is a combined arms land force operating under actual or assumed combat circumstances, usually for the length of a specific military campaign. It is used by other nations, but can have a di ...

, becoming later Resident in

Kandahar Kandahar (; Kandahār, , Qandahār) is a List of cities in Afghanistan, city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on the Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul, with a population ...

. An attempt was made on his life during a trip in southern Afghanistan on 10 January 1879. He was also posted on special duty in

Kashmir Kashmir () is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term "Kashmir" denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. Today, the term encompas ...

(January 1883), acting resident in

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part ...

(April–July 1884), resident in Kashmir (August 1884), agent to the governor-general at

Baroda Vadodara (), also known as Baroda, is the second largest city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It serves as the administrative headquarters of the Vadodara district and is situated on the banks of the Vishwamitri River, from the state capital ...

(December 1887), resident at

Mysore Mysore (), officially Mysuru (), is a city in the southern part of the state of Karnataka, India. Mysore city is geographically located between 12° 18′ 26″ north latitude and 76° 38′ 59″ east longitude. It is located at an altitude of ...

and chief commissioner in

Coorg Kodagu (also known by its former name Coorg) is an administrative district in the Karnataka state of India. Before 1956, it was an administratively separate Coorg State, at which point it was merged into an enlarged Mysore State. It occupies ...

(January 1889). He was later recalled from southern India to Baluchistan. He died in

Quetta Quetta (; ur, ; ; ps, کوټه‎) is the tenth List of cities in Pakistan by population, most populous city in Pakistan with a population of over 1.1 million. It is situated in Geography of Pakistan, south-west of the country close to the ...

of pneumonia after an attack of

influenza Influenza, commonly known as "the flu", is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These symptoms ...

and was buried at Quetta.

Natural history

During all his time in Abyssinia, Persia and Baluchistan St John took a keen interest in natural history and hunting. His personal notes from the Persian border commission expedition of 1871 are included in the zoology report of the expedition prepared by

William Thomas Blanford William Thomas Blanford (7 October 183223 June 1905) was an English geologist and naturalist. He is best remembered as the editor of a major series on ''The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma''. Biography Blanford was born ...

. Blanford's own account includes notes on St John's experiences with lions in Persia, while another account is provided of him chasing a tiger that threatened a colleague. St John also corresponded with ornithologists in the region, including

Allan Octavian Hume Allan Octavian Hume, CB ICS (4 June 1829 – 31 July 1912) was a British civil servant, political reformer, ornithologist and botanist who worked in British India. He was the founder of the Indian National Congress. A notable ornithologist, Hum ...

. He was a member of the Royal Geological Society and the Zoological Society of London and sent many animals back for the collections, including a live

bactrian camel The Bactrian camel (''Camelus bactrianus''), also known as the Mongolian camel or domestic Bactrian camel, is a large even-toed ungulate native to the steppes of Central Asia. It has two humps on its back, in contrast to the single-humped drom ...

. A species of woodpecker ('' Picus sanctijohannis'', now considered a

subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...

of '' Dendrocoptes medius'') and a species of snake ('' Fowlea sanctijohannis'') are both named after him.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("St. John, O. B. C.", pp. 254-255).

Death

St John died on 3 June 1891 in

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severity ...

after an attack of

during a recurrence of the 1889–90 pandemic.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:St John, Oliver Administrators in British India 1837 births 1891 deaths Knights Commander of the Order of the Star of India People from Ryde Graduates of Addiscombe Military Seminary Bengal Engineers officers Oliver Deaths from the 1889–1890 flu pandemic People educated at Norwich School