Assassination of Richard Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo
1872 killing of the Governor-General of India
Richard Southwell Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo, the Viceroy and Governor-General of India, was assassinated on 8 February 1872 by Sher Ali Afridi, a disgruntled Indian soldier of Afghan Muslim background, who had been convicted of murder and condemned to penal servitude. The assassination occurred at the penal settlement of Port Blair, Andaman Islands, India. It was the first, and only, time a Governor-General of India was assassinated.
Assassination
Background
Lord Mayo, a Conservative statesman of Anglo-Irish background, entitled the Earl of Mayo in the peerage of Ireland, had served as Viceroy of India since January 1869. He had been appointed by Queen Victoria on the advice of the then Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli (later confirmed by William Ewart Gladstone). In late January 1872, he engaged in a State visit to Rangoon and Maulmain in Burma, where he was received with great splendour. On 30 January he held a levee and ball, and hosted a grand ball on 2 February. On 5 February he visited the Andaman Islands, where he planned to inspect the infamous Penal settlement at Port Blair. The islands were used as a British penal colony for convicts from India, both criminals and political prisoners. Arriving with a large entourage, Lord Mayo was involved in drafting the regulations of the penal settlement at Port Blair.
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This entry incorporates text from “Assassination of Richard Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.