Michael Linning Melville

Michael Linning Melville, born 1805 in Ireland died 22 June 1878 in Kensington, Middlesex, was a Scots Barrister, Judge and Lieutenant Governor of Sierra Leone. He was commissioned by King William IV of the United Kingdom to suppress the slave trade by force off the West Coast of Africa.

Melville was an ethnic Scot from Dublin where his family had lived since the middle of the Eighteenth century. He was named after his godfather, the writer Michael Linning, and went on to marry the latter's niece Elizabeth Helen Callender.

In September 1818 both of Melville's parents died within a few days of each other. His loss aroused the pity of the Prince Regent who, in November of that year, granted the boy an annual pension from the Civil List.

At some stage in the 1820s Meville joined the Foreign Office. By 1827 he was serving as a Justice of the Peace and in 1835 Hansard lists Melville as King's Advocate and Registrar of the Vice Admiralty Court in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He interposed his tours of duty in Africa with study at Lincoln's Inn being called to the bar in 1843.

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