John Nesfield

John Collinson Nesfield (14 August 1836 – 28 June 1919) served in various roles as an educator in British India and was for some time curate of St Michael's Church, Highgate, London. He wrote numerous books, of which his works on grammar were particularly influential.

John Nesfield was born in 1836 and was the son of a cleric from Wiltshire, England. He attended Highgate Grammar School from 1852-1855 and later taught there from 1859-1864. He became a postmaster (holder of a senior scholarship) at Merton College at the University of Oxford. There he earned a BA degree in 1860 and was later promoted to an MA in 1862.

Nesfield became the curate of St Michael's Church, Highgate, in Middlesex. He began his career in British India in January 1867. There he served initially as a professor at Presidency College and Krishnagar Government College, both in the Bengal Presidency, before becoming in May 1872 a Director of Public Instruction (DPI) and schools inspector in Lower Burma. The Indian Education Service was not founded until 1896 and thus he was an employee of the provincial government. In his role as a DPI he took on responsibility for administration and policy-making, rather than being purely a teacher.

Nesfield transferred from Lower Burma to become DPI in Oudh State in March 1874, then in 1878 became principal of Benares College when the administration of Oudh was subsumed in the newly created North-Western Provinces and Oudh. He joined the inspectorate there in the following year and in 1885 was passed over for promotion to become the province's DPI when, as was not uncommon, the government determined to prefer Edmund White, who was a member of the Indian Civil Service, to an educator. Nesfield objected strenuously to this decision, firing off letters first to the Secretary of State for the province, R. A. Cross, 1st Viscount Cross, and then to Alfred Comyn Lyall, who was the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces and Chief Commissioner of Oudh. When those appeals failed, he wrote also to the Viceroy of India, Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, but was again rebuffed. He eventually did achieve the promotion when White retired in August 1892. He had been made a Fellow of the University of Allahabad in 1887, the year of its establishment, and retired from India in October 1894.

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