Sir William Dunkin

Sir William Dunkin (died 1807) was an Irish barrister and judge in Bengal.

Dunkin was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1753, as the eldest son of John Dunkin of Bushfoot, County Antrim; Later he was described as from Clogher, County Antrim. He was High Sheriff of Antrim in 1777. Although he had inherited an estate, he encumbered it with debt, and went to Calcutta to practise as a barrister.

In October 1781 Dunkin was mentioned as on the way to India in a letter from Edmund Burke to Lord George Macartney, two of his friends. There he was a friend of William Hickey. He lived a bachelor life, sharing accommodation with Stephen Cassan, another Irish barrister. In 1788 he set off to go to England in search of a judicial appointment in Calcutta, sailing to Europe in December on the Phoenix under Captain Gray.

Dunkin returned to Bengal on the Phoenix in August 1791; he had been appointed a member of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William. being knighted in March of that year. The appointment was later attributed to the influence of Henry Dundas. Dunkin had in fact obtained a reluctant support for it from Lord Thurlow. His senior colleague on the court, Robert Chambers, did not welcome it, regarding Dunkin as suspect; further Dunkin and Hickey were allies in opposition to Chambers. Hickey's accounts of Chambers in his memoirs, in relation to Dunkin on the court, have been called partisan and misleading, in particular in relation to a bazaar case where John Hyde was brought from his sickbed in 1796 as a supporting vote by Chambers against Dunkin.

Dunkin resigned from the post in 1797, being replaced by John Royds. He had a house in Portman Square, London, where Thomas Reynolds knew him as one of a set of wealthy returnees from India; and died at The Polygon, Southampton in 1807.

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