Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/West, Raymond
WEST, Sir RAYMOND (1832–1912), Indian civil servant, judge, and jurist, born at Ballyloughrane, co. Kerry, 18 September 1832, was the elder son of Frederick Henry West, journalist, by his wife, Frances, daughter of Richard Raymond, of Ballyloughrane, Ballybunnion. His father's occupation was precarious, and the boy's education was much neglected; but his mother's personality and wide culture made up for this, and he was able to secure a scholarship to Queen's College, Galway, where he graduated with the highest honours in 1855. In the same year he passed into the service of the East India Company as one of the second batch of ‘competition-wallahs’. He arrived in India in September 1856, and was posted to the southern Maratha country, where he soon saw active service as civil officer with the force sent against the insurgent Sawant clan. His experiences were of lasting value; but he was always conscientiously averse from wearing in India the Mutiny medal which he received.
West joined the judicial department in 1860, and in 1863 was appointed registrar of the recently constituted high court, where he distinguished himself by the part which he took in building up the judicial service, by his annotated edition of the Bombay code, Acts and Regulations in force in the Presidency of Bombay (1867–1868), and by his collaboration with Dr. J. G. Bühler in their important Digest of Hindu Law (1867–1869) consisting of a collection of the replies of the shastris (Hindu law officers attached to the former Zilla courts) to questions of Hindu law addressed to them by the courts. The Digest, with its scholarly introduction and annotation, throws great light on the relations of custom and revelation as sources of Hindu law; and it has helped the Bombay high court to steer a wise middle course, avoiding the exaggerated deference to revelation and the unnecessary search for ‘custom’ which have prevailed elsewhere in India. As district judge of Canara (1866) and as judicial commissioner in Sind (1868), West had further opportunities of carrying out his ideas of judicial organization. But his tenure of the latter post was broken by two years' furlough necessitated by overwork, a ‘rest’ which he spent in omnivorous legal study and in obtaining a call to the Irish bar. In 1873 he was appointed a judge of the Bombay high court, where he had already officiated in 1871, and he held that position till 1886. The long series of his judgments enjoys an authority in India not exceeded by that of any other judge; and the ultra-conservatism of some of them, which has recently evoked criticism from Hindu reformers, is perhaps a judicial virtue.
West's immense and varied reading, in addition to his judicial duties, had already brought on insomnia, from which he suffered for the rest of his Indian service. In 1879 he was deputed to serve on the Indian statute law commission at Simla; the portion of its report dealing with principles of codification is from his pen, and the whole report owes much to his experience. In 1884 his services were lent to the Egyptian government as procureur-général to reform the judiciary. The root and branch reorganization which he recommended was held by Lord Cromer [q.v.] to make insufficient allowance for temporary political difficulties; but his proposals, though not immediately practicable, were partly carried out at a later date. In 1887 he became a member of the executive council of the governor of Bombay, and was created K.C.I.E. in 1888. In the extensive judicial business which came before that government West continued to add to his reputation; and it has been suggested that an edition of his judgments and minutes of this period would be of even wider legal interest than his earlier work. In the purely executive work of government he was perhaps hampered by his judicial conservatism. He retired in 1892.
West deserves to be remembered not only for his own judicial eminence, but also for his guidance of the subordinate judiciary. English law and justice in India were exotics which required personal explanation and example to render them workable or even intelligible. It was an even greater task to build up a sound tradition, an esprit-de-corps, and, above all, an efficient system of inspection and control. To the progress of Bombay West also contributed by his long connexion with the university, culminating in his vice-chancellorship (1878 and 1886–1892). He not only insisted on a high standard of examinations, but also firmly believed in an Indian nationalism which should yet be open to the best influences of Europe. In conversation with students his slight awkwardness of manner would disappear, and he was always ready to fire their imagination with frank talk on great subjects. Bombay University has only given three honorary degrees in its history, of which one was a fitting tribute to the services of Sir Raymond West. In retirement he showed as lecturer in Indian law at Cambridge (1895–1907) his love of educational work.
West was twice married: first, in 1867 to Clementina Fergusson (died 1896), only daughter of William Maunsell Chute, of Chute Hall, co. Kerry, by whom he had a son and three daughters; secondly, in 1901 to Annie Kirkpatrick, eldest daughter of Surgeon-General Henry Cook, M.D., of Prior's Mesne, Lydney, Gloucestershire, who survived him. He died 8 September 1912 at Upper Norwood.
[The Times, 9 September 1912; Times of India (Bombay), March–April 1892; Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1913; Report of the Indian Statute Law Commission, 1879; Bombay High Court Reports, vols. viii–xii; Indian Law Reports, Bombay Series, vols. i–xii; private information.]