LE MESURIER, Cecil John Reginald. Cephalonia, Ionian Islands 7.2.1855? — 11.2.1932. British Colonial Civil Servant in Sri Lanka. Son of Cecil Brooke Le M. (1831–1913), an officer, and his Greek wife Nicolina, Contessa Zancarol (1839–1921, married 1854). In 1881 already in Ceylon. In 1896 dismissed from service on ground of having converted to Islam and married. Later resident in Perth, Australia, as solicitor and barrister. However, http://www.greatmirror.com/index.cfm?navid=917 claims the he was already Government Agent at Nuwara Eliya in the 1860s, thus he cannot have born in 1855. But genealogical sources give the Le M. of Perth as late of Ceylon Civil Service and his birth as stated above, while his wife is Juliette Lenoir and children born in the 1880s.
A renewed check with Internet brought forth a court judgement of 1895. In this he accused the above-mentioned wife of repeated adultery and demanded divorce. They had married in 1883, had at least one son and were still living in Ceylon. The further details of the long (24 p.) document are not relevant here. The case was not solved.
Toussaint says he arrived in 1875 and then served as Assistant Government Agent at Nuwara Eliya, then at Matara. “He embraced Mohammedanism and took as his second wife Miss Rivett-Carnac… On the failure of his business in Batticaloa he returned to England, and practised as Barrister.” This could mean Perth in Scotland, not in Australia, but his death seems to be recorded in the archives of Western Australia.
Publications: Edited & transl. with T. B. Panabokke: Niti Niganduwa, or Vocabulary of Law as it existed in the last days of the Kandyan Kingdom. 1880.
– Articles in JRAS-CB, e.g.: “Principal Religious Ceremonies observed by the Kandyans of Ceylon”, 7:23, 1881, 32–42; “Aṅ-Ke”iya [a Sinhalese game]”, 8:29, 1884 (1886), 368-394; “The Veddas of Ceylon”, 9:32, 1886, 336-347
.– “Sinhalese Proverbial Sayings”, The Orientalist 1, 1884, 233-235, 275-277.
– Manual of the Nuwara Eliya District of the Central Province, Ceylon. 308 p. 1893.
Sources: J.R. Toussaint, Journal of the Dutch Burgher Union of Ceylon 23, 1934, 134f.; www.researchgate.net/publication/236709347_Fragile_Identities_The_Colonial_Consequences_of_CJR_Le_Mesurier_in_Ceylon (only beginning available to me); www.guernsey-society.org.uk/acrobat/Le%20Mesurier%20Rough%20Index%20v4%20final.pdf.
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