Robert Thorpe (1773 – May 11, 1836) was a judge and political figure in

Upper Canada The Province of Upper Canada () was a Province, part of The Canadas, British Canada established in 1791 by the Kingdom of Great Britain, to govern the central third of the lands in British North America, formerly part of the Province of Queb ...

and was later chief justice of

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Sierra Leone's land area is . It has a tropical climate and envi ...

Early life

Thorpe was born in

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

in 1773. He was the second son of Robert T. Thorpe and Bonna Debrisay. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1788 and a degree in law in 1789 from

Trinity College Dublin Trinity College Dublin (), officially titled The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, and legally incorporated as Trinity College, the University of Dublin (TCD), is the sole constituent college of the Unive ...

. He was admitted to the bar in 1790. At some point before 1815 he was given a

Legum Doctor Legum is an English surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Colin Legum (1919–2003), British anti-apartheid activist * Judd Legum (born 1978), American journalist, lawyer, and political staffer * Margaret Legum (1933–2007), Brit ...

In Canada

In 1801, he was appointed as

Chief Justice of Prince Edward Island The Court of Appeal of Prince Edward Island (also known as the Prince Edward Island Court of Appeal, and as PECA in legal abbreviation) is the appellate court for the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island, and thus the senior provincial court ...

, arriving in the colony in November 1802. He encouraged the attorney general

Peter Magowan Peter Alden Magowan (April 5, 1942 – January 27, 2019) was an American businessman. He was the managing general partner of the San Francisco Giants of Major League Baseball from 1993 to 2008. He was the chief executive officer of Safeway Inc. ...

to prosecute minor crimes that were annoying to the population. Since he was not paid on time, he sailed to

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

in 1804 with a plan to unite Prince Edward Island,

Cape Breton Cape Breton Island (, formerly '; or '; ) is a rugged and irregularly shaped island on the Atlantic coast of North America and part of the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. The island accounts for 18.7% of Nova Scotia's total area. Although ...

and

Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region of Labrador, having a total size of . As of 2025 the population ...

. He was captured by a

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

privateer and taken to Spain. Thorpe later escaped and was appointed a puisne judge of the Court of King's Bench in Upper Canada on 5 July 1805. In 1806 William Weekes was killed in a duel and Thorpe was elected as his replacement to the 4th Parliament of Upper Canada. He advocated that the executive council should be responsible to the elected representatives. He advocated for ideas that would be later called

responsible government Responsible government is a conception of a system of government that embodies the principle of parliamentary accountability, the foundation of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. Governments (the equivalent of the executive br ...

and

home rule Home rule is the government of a colony, dependent country, or region by its own citizens. It is thus the power of a part (administrative division) of a state or an external dependent country to exercise such of the state's powers of governan ...

. Lieutenant Governor

Francis Gore Francis Gore, (1769 – 3 November 1852) was an English military officer and British colonial administrator in Bermuda and Upper Canada. Gore was born in Blackheath, London, England in 1769 the son of Francis Gore and Caroline Beresford ...

suspended Thorpe from the legislature in July 1807 for advocating against the powers of the Lieutenant Governor. He left Upper Canada in 1807 when he believed he would be removed from his role as a judge due to his reform ideas.

Sierra Leone

In 1808, Thorpe was appointed the first chief justice in Sierra Leone (chief justice and judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court). He arrived in Sierra Leone in 1811. He presided over the cases of

Samuel Samo Samuel Samo was a Dutch slave trader who was the first person to be prosecuted under the British Slave Trade Felony Act 1811. Samuel Samo was the uncle of John Samo, a Dutch shopkeeper who served as King's Advocate and Member of His Majesty's ...

(7-10 April 1812), Joseph Peters (11 June 1812) and William Tufft (12 June 1812). Thorpe left Sierra Leone in 1813 after he was given a health leave by the governor of Sierra Leone. He was ordered to pay £630 for a surrogate who presided as a judge for him. In 1815 Thorpe brought charges against

Charles William Maxwell Lieutenant-General Sir Charles William Maxwell (1775 – 23 September 1848, Broadstairs) was a British soldier and colonial administrator. He was the eldest son of Charles Maxwell of Terraughty, Dumfriesshire and his third wife, Helen Douglas. ...

and supposedly tried to blackmail the colonial secretary Lord Bathurst. Thorpe was dismissed from his judgeship for not bringing the charges to Bathurst sooner.

Personal life

Thorpe was married and had seven children.

Later life

In 1815 he published ''A Letter to William Wilberforce, Esq. M. P., Vice-President of the

African Institution The African Institution was founded in 1807 after British abolitionists succeeded in ending the slave trade based in the United Kingdom. The Institution was formed to succeed where the former Sierra Leone Company had failed—to create a vi ...

'' which was critical of the

Sierra Leone Company The Sierra Leone Company was the corporate body involved in founding the Freetown, second British colony in Africa on 11 March 1792 through the resettlement of Black Loyalists who had initially been settled in Nova Scotia (the Nova Scotian Settler ...

and the African Institution which succeeded it. :"After sixteen years experiment, trade having failed; cultivation being retarded, civilization unattempted; religion and morality debased, and the slave trade nourished; every plan defeated, every artifice exposed; the company desirous of relieving themselves from the enormous expense prevailed on government to accept a surrender of the colony, and formed (to uphold their old influence) a society called the African Institution: having taken leave of the expense, they demanded to be paid for their buildings, and did accordingly receive a large sum from the treasury, although they had before obtained (by pleading poverty) one hundred thousand pounds from the government for the improvement of the colony: their books and agents were removed; while many of the settlers who had toiled for them for years were left unpaid." He died in London on May 11, 1836.

Published works

''A Reply "Point by Point" to the Special Report of the Directors of the African Institution ...''
(1815) London: F. C. and J. Rivington. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
''A commentary on the treatises entered into between his Britannic majesty, and his most faithful majesty ... his catholic majesty ... and ... the king of the Netherlands ... for the purpose of preventing their subjects from engaging in any illicit traffic in slaves''
(1819) London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Browne

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thorpe, Robert 1760s births 1836 deaths Members of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada Upper Canada judges Sierra Leone Colony and Protectorate judges Judges in Prince Edward Island Colony of Prince Edward Island judges Chief justices of Sierra Leone Expatriate judges from Ireland