Papers of Sir Hilary Rudolph R. Blood

Correspondence, memoranda, articles, reports etc. covering colonial service in The Gambia, Barbados, Mauritius, British Honduras, Zanzibar and Malta.

Sir Hilary Rudolph Robert Blood was born on the 28 May 1893 in Glasgow, Scotland, and educated at the Irvine Royal Academy and at Glasgow University. He served in World War I in the Royal Scots Fusiliers and was wounded in the Gallipoli campaign. In 1920, Blood entered the Ceylon Civil Service as a cadet (1920-1930), later serving as Colonial Secretary in Grenada (1930-1934) and in Sierra Leone (1934-1942). He was then appointed to Governorships in The Gambia (1942-1947), Barbados (1947-1949) and Mauritius (1949-1954), before spending 2 years serving as Constitutional Commissioner in British Honduras (1959) and in Zanzibar (1960). In 1960 he was Chairman of the Malta Constitutional Commission.

During his retirement he worked frequently for the Civil Service Commission, both as a group chairman at the Civil Service selection board, testing candidates for the administrative class of the Home Civil Service and the senior branch of the Foreign Service, and as a member of the final selection boards in the same class of competition.

Blood was active in the service of the Royal Commonwealth Society, and was chairman of both the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind (1962-1965) and the Royal Society of Arts (1963-1965). He was appointed CMG (1934), KCMG (1944) and GBE (1953), and received an honorary LLD from Glasgow University (1944). Blood died on the 20 June 1967 in Ashford, Kent.

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Collection level description created by Marion Lowman, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.

The library holds a card index of all manuscript collections in its reading room and a handlist is also available for this collection.

Listed as no. 3 in Manuscript Collections (Africana and non-Africana) in Rhodes House Library, Oxford, Supplementary accessions to the end of 1977 and Cumulative Index, compiled by Wendy S. Byrne (Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1978).

No reproduction or publication of personal papers without permission. Contact the library in the first instance.

Deposited with the Oxford Colonial Records Project.