Robert Merttins Bird

Robert Merttins Bird (1788–1853) was a British civil servant in the Bengal Presidency. He is known for the far-reaching "Mahalwari" tax reform.

Early life He was the son of Robert and Lucy Bird of Taplow, Buckinghamshire; his younger brother Edward was the father of Isabella Bird. The marriage was of cousins, with the same surname, and there were four sons and six daughters. His sister was Mary Bird.

Bird entered the East India College, after preparation by a tutor, and with the support of George Smith; and passed out ninth in its first leaving class, the class of 1808. He arrived in India on 9 November 1808. There was more time in college, at Fort William, after which he took the judicial route, one of the two main specialisations for the civil servants of the East India Company. His first wife died in 1821, in the first cholera pandemic, leaving him with children to bring up, and his sister Mary came out from England to support him. He married again in 1824.

Revenue officer In 1829 Bird was transferred to the appointment of commissioner of revenue and circuit for the Gorakhpur division.

Later life Bird spent the remainder of his life in England, where he was a member of the committee of the Church Missionary Society. A few months before his death, which occurred at Torquay on 22 August 1853, he gave evidence before the committee of the House of Commons on the renewal of the East India Company's charter.

Evangelical background Bird, an evangelical Christian, supported the Church Missionary Society's work while still in India. By family background he was linked to the Wilberforces: his mother Lucy Wilberforce Bird was the sister of William Wilberforce Bird the Member of Parliament for Coventry; William Wilberforce was a close relation, Lucy being the daughter of his aunt Judith. He was joined in India in 1823 by his sister Mary Bird (1789–1834), who worked as a missionary. The second sister, Lucy, married in 1828 the Rev. Marmaduke Thompson, who had been in India from 1806 to 1819 as a chaplain nominated by Charles Simeon, returning as a widower to the United Kingdom.

William Bell Mackenzie wrote a preface to an edition in 1855 of writings on the Pentateuch, Bible Teaching, by three of Bird's sisters.

Legacy Penner identifies the "Bird-Thomason school" of officials that followed the approach laid down by Bird. It included, but was not limited to, George Campbell (1824–1892), John Russell Colvin, Frederick Currie, Robert Needham Cust, George Frederick Edmonstone, Henry Miers Elliot, John Laird Mair Lawrence, Charles Grenville Mansel, Robert Montgomery, William Muir, Edward Anderdon Reade, Richard Temple, and Edward Parry Thornton. Of those, Colvin, Cust, Lawrence, Mansel, Montgomery, Muir, Reade, Temple and Thornton are identified as evangelicals.

Family Bird married: In 1824 in Cape Town, Jane Bird, a first cousin as daughter of William Wilberforce Bird, comptroller of customs there, who died in Taplow in 1845; In 1848, Henrietta Maria Jane Grenfell of Taplow. She was the fifth daughter of Pascoe Grenfell, and the wives of Charles Kingsley and James Froude were her sisters.

The eldest son of the first marriage was Robert Wilberforce Bird. Another son, Charles Robinson Bird, was rector of Castle Eden and father of Mary Bird, and of Harriet Amelia Scott Bird (1864–1934) who trained at the Edinburgh Medical College for Women, worked at Leith Hospital, married Robert William MacKenna and was mother of Robert Merttins Bird MacKenna, both physicians.

In 1833, Bird's sister, Elizabeth, married James Harington Evans, as his second wife. His daughter, Lucy Elizabeth (d.1835) was married to Sir Frederick Currie. In his will Bird made provision for five sons and three daughters.