S. M. Edwardes

Stephen Meredyth Edwardes (1873–1927) was an English colonial administrator of the Indian Civil Service. He is known as the first civilian Bombay Police Commissioner, and as an author on Indian topics.

Early life

He was the son of the Rev. Stephen Edwardes, a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, who died in 1886; his mother was Ellen Edwardes, daughter of David Edwardes FRCS, who married secondly in 1895, Thomas Erskine Holland. His paternal grandfather Lewis Edwardes was a schoolmaster with an academy near Streatham Common, described by his pupil John Beames as "a short, stout kindly old Welshman."

Stephen Edwardes the younger was educated at Eton College from 1885 to 1888, where the librarian Henry Broadbent was his tutor. His younger brother Lewis (born 1874) was educated at Charterhouse School, leaving in 1890 and becoming a stockbroker.

Stephen Edwardes studied at Christ Church, Oxford; but may not have been an undergraduate, since his name is absent from Foster's matriculation list covering 1880 to 1892. In 1894 Edwardes entered by examination the Indian Civil Service, one of two candidates awarded an Indian Civil Service scholarship at Christ Church, the other being Loftus Otway Clarke B.A., but Edwardes was named without postnominals.

In 1895 Edwardes was a 2nd Assistant in Bombay. To the 1901 census in British India, he contributed Part IV History of Volume X Bombay (Town & Island). He held posts as district collector, magistrate and secretary in the administration.

Police Commissioner 1909–1916

As Police Commissioner Edwardes was a noted reformer, regulating prostitution and controlling disturbances arising from ethnic and religious tensions. He regarded the activism of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a Chitpavan Brahmin, as consciously employing offence to Muslims. He took steps to establish a charitable home for Muslim girls.