Robert Merttins Bird

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

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.

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. He began service as an assistant to the registrar of the Sadr Diwani Adalat in Calcutta.

The first (provincial) experience for Bird was a tour in 1813 with William Wilberforce Bird, a first cousin. It took him to the Benares area of North India. He was a magistrate and judge at Ghazipur from 1816 to 1826, then becoming judge at Gorakhpur, remaining in what is now northern Uttar Pradesh. 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.

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

As a judicial officer, Bird had acquired insight into land ownership in India, and the impact on it of the legal framework. On his appointment as a revenue commissioner, he made a reputation, and when it was decided in 1833 to revise the settlement of the land revenue of the North-Western Provinces, Lord William Bentinck, the governor-general, chose Bird. Retaining his seat as a member of board of revenue recently constituted at Allahabad, he took sole charge of the settlement operations, which he brought to completion by the end of 1841. The conclusions were stated in a major report. Bird retired from the service in 1842, and was succeeded on the board of revenue by James Thomason.

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