John Thomas Bigge

John Thomas Bigge
Portrait of John Thomas Bigge
Born	8 March 1780 Northumberland, England
Died	22 December 1843 Grosvenor Hotel, London, England
Cause of death	accidental death
Occupation	Judge and royal commissioner
Parent(s)	Thomas Charles Bigge

John Thomas Bigge (8 March 1780 – 22 December 1843) was an English judge and royal commissioner.

Bigge was born at Benton House, Northumberland, England, the son of Thomas Charles Bigge, High Sheriff of Northumberland in 1771. He was educated at Newcastle Grammar School and Westminster School (1795), and in 1797 entered Christ Church, Oxford (B.A., 1801; M.A., 1804).

Bigge was called to the Bar in 1806 and was appointed Chief Judge of Trinidad in 1814, a post he held for the next four years.

Since 1817, Lord Bathurst had wanted to examine whether transportation was an effective deterrent to crime. The commissioner may also have been appointed in response to complaints to London from leaders of the community of free settlers including John Macarthur.

On 5 January 1819, Bigge was appointed a special commissioner to examine the government of the Colony of New South Wales by Lord Bathurst, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. His brief was to determine how far the expanding colony of New South Wales could be “made adequate to the Objects of its original Institution”, which were understood to be purely to be a penal colony. He was to come to Australia to investigate all aspects of the colonial government, then under the governorship of Lachlan Macquarie, including finances, the church and the judiciary, and the convict system.

Together with his secretary Thomas Hobbes Scott, Bigge arrived in Sydney on 26 September 1819, by the ship John Barry. Bigge finished gathering evidence February 1821 and on 10 February, sailed back to England aboard the ship Dromedary.