Deciphered Shorthand in Justice Hyde's Supreme Court Notebooks, Calcutta, India, 1780–1782

The legal notebooks of Justice John Hyde are an important source of information about India’s first Supreme Court, established in Calcutta in 1774. The notebooks contain 22,000 pages of handwriting by the first sitting judges, including significant shorthand passages by Justice Hyde that have not been deciphered until now. This paper describes the decoding of the shorthand and its contents. Hyde used shorthand to securely record his views on the profit-making activities of his fellow judges, Sir Elijah Impey and Sir Robert Chambers, and the effects these had on the Court’s integrity, public image and ability to enforce its jurisdiction. The decrypted shorthand adds to documentation on a contentious shift from a patronage-based social system to systematized rule of law in late eighteenth century British India.