John Shore, 1st Baron Teignmouth (5 October 1751 – 14 February 1834) was a British official of the East India Company who served as Governor-General of Bengal from 1793 to 1798. In 1798 he was created Baron Teignmouth in the Peerage of Ireland. Shore was the first president of the British and Foreign Bible Society. A close friend of the orientalist Sir William Jones (1746–1794), Shore edited a memoir of Jones's life in 1804, containing many of Jones's letters.

Early life

Born in St. James's Street, Piccadilly, on 5 October 1751, he was the elder son of Thomas Shore of Melton Place, near Romford, an East India Company employee, by his wife Dorothy, daughter of Captain Shepherd of the company's naval service. At the age of fourteen Shore was sent to Harrow School. In his seventeenth year Shore was moved to a commercial school at Hoxton for the purpose of learning bookkeeping, to take up an opportunity made for him by the merchant Frederick Pigou, a family friend. Edmund Burke protested vainly. Shore embarked for India at the end of the month. On 10 March 1793 he arrived at Calcutta, where he remained without official employment or responsibility until the departure of Cornwallis. He succeeded to the government on 28 October 1793.

Later life

Resigning the government into the hands of Sir Alured Clarke, Teignmouth left India in March 1798. On 4 April 1807 he was appointed a member of the board of control, an office to which no salary was attached, and four days afterwards was sworn a member of the privy council. He occasionally transacted business at the board of control, or at the Cockpit, where as a privy councillor he sometimes decided Indian appeals with Sir William Grant and Sir John Nicholl. But he occupied the most of his time in religious and philanthropic matters, though he nominally remained a member of the board until February 1828. His second daughter, Anna Maria, married Sir Thomas Hill. Another daughter, Caroline Dorothea, married Rev. Robert Anderson (their eldest daughter, Florence Caroline, married Lord Alwyne Compton). Shore was great-uncle to the poet Louisa Catherine Shore.

References

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Further reading

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