Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/53

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Anstice
41
Anstie

he rapidly achieved great success, and filled a temporary vacancy on the bench in 1865. His rapidity of decision pleasurably astonished the suitors of the court; but a too vigorous denunciation of the alleged commercial immorality of the presidency of Bengal led him into controversies with all the superior officials, and he was compelled to withdraw from his judicial appointment. The year 1866 he spent in England, and threw himself with his wonted energy into the agitation then proceeding for parliamentary reform. In a tract entitled 'A Plea for the Unrepresented for the Restitution of the Franchise,' he declared himself in favour of manhood suffrage, and attempted to prove that all limitations of the franchise were due to class-legislation, and were usurpations of original popular rights. Lord Houghton, although he disagreed with its conclusions, characterised the pamphlet as 'a valuable contribution to the argumentative and historical literature of reform' (Essays on Reform, p. 49). In another tract, published in 1867, Anstey severely criticised Disraeli's Reform Act of 1867; and during that and the following year he contributed three important papers to the 'Transactions' of the Juridical Society—one on Blackstone's theory of the omnipotence of Parliament (iii. 305-39), another on judicial oaths as administered to heathen witnesses (iii. 371-401), in which Anstey advocated the abolition of all oaths; and a third on the competence of colonial legislatures to enact laws in derogation of common liability and common right (iii. 401-57). About the close of 1868 Anstey, who had sought in vain a practice at the English bar, returned to Bombay, and reassumed his former prominent position at the bar there. He died in India on 12 Aug. 1873, and was deeply lamented by the native population of Bombay, whether Parsees, Hindoos, or Mahomedans, to whom he had always been ready to render legal assistance. In spite of his pugnacious disposition and unseemly quarrels, and in spite of his strange addiction to multifarious crotchets, 'a real high honesty of purpose' seems to have lain at the bottom of his extravagances. His aims were invariably legitimate enough, but he rarely took rational measures to attain their fulfilment.

[Times, 15 Aug. 1873; Pall Mall Gazette, 3 Sept. 1873; Times of India, 14 Aug. 1873; Tablet, 16 Aug. 1873; Weekly Register, 16 Aug. 1873; Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 1847-1852; Brit. Mus. Cat.]

S. L. L.

ANSTICE, JOSEPH (1808–1836), classical scholar, was born in 1808. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. He took his B.A. on 3 Feb. 1831, and M.A. on 2 April 1835. In 1831 he was appointed professor of classical literature in King's College, London, a post which he resigned in 1835 from ill-health. He died on 29 Feb. 1836 at Torquay, He published:

  1. 'Richard Coeur de Lion' (prize poem), 1828.
  2. 'Introductory Lecture at King's College, London,' 1831.
  3. 'Selections from the Choric Poetry of the Greek Dramatic Writers, translated into English Verse,' 1832.
  4. 'The Influence of the Roman Conquests upon Literature and the Arts in Rome' (in Oxford English Prize Essays), 1836.
  5. 'The Child's Christian Year,' 1841, was partly his work.

[Gent. Mag. for May 1836, N.S., v. 552; Josiah Miller's Our Hymns, 1866, p. 877.]

A. G.

ANSTIE, FRANCIS EDMUND (1833–1874), physician, was born at Devizes, Wiltshire, 11 Dec. 1833, the son of Mr. Paul Anstie, a manufacturer belonging to a family long notable for their attachment to liberal principles. He was educated at a private school till the age of sixteen, when he was apprenticed to his cousin, Mr. Thomas Anstie, a medical practitioner, with whom he remained three years. In 1853 he entered the medical department of King's College, London, where his teachers were Sir William Fergusson, Mr. Bowman, and especially Dr. R. B. Todd, whose doctrines and practice produced a permanent impression upon Anstie's mind. He became M.R.C.S. and L.S.A. in 1856, was M.B. London in 1857, M.D. 1859. He was admitted a member of the College of Physicians in 1859, fellow 1865. In 1860 he was elected assistant physician to the Westminster Hospital, but did not become full physician till 1873. He was lecturer at that school, first on forensic medicine, afterwards for many years on materia medica, and for a short time on medicine. In 1862 Anstie married a daughter of Mr. Wass of Cromford, Derbyshire, whom he left a widow with a son and two daughters.

On his first entrance into professional life Anstie was occupied in administering chloroform for the operations of Sir William Fergusson; but he soon went into practice as a physician, and became very fully occupied in hospital work and in journalism, being for some years a member of the editorial staff of the 'Lancet;' while in the last few years of his life he was beginning to get a good consulting practice. Dr. Anstie's life was cut short by an illness contracted in the course of a sanitary inspection. Some strange cases of fatal disease having occurred in the schools of the Patriotic Fund at Wandsworth, Anstie