Colonial Despatches

Augustus Frederick Pemberton was born near Dublin, Ireland and trained to be a lawyer before emigrating to Vancouver Island in 1855.1 He was appointed Chief Commissioner of Police and Justice of the Peace by Governor Douglas in 1858 and quickly expanded and professionalized the police force in Victoria.2 He also served as a judge and was a member of British Columbia's Legislative Council from 1868 to 1871.3 Pemberton was personally well connected in the colonies: Joseph Despard Pemberton was his nephew, and Chartres Brew was his brother-in-law. After Pemberton's death in 1891 at the age of eighty-four, Victoria's Daily Colonist newspaper wrote next to Governor Douglas, there is no man to whom the country is more indebted for starting on a law-abiding career than to the late honorable gentleman.4

• 1. E. O. S. Scholefield and F. W. Howay, British Columbia from the Earliest Times to the Present [vol. 4] (Vancouver: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1914), 94. http://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0356579
• 2. Douglas to Lytton, 11 December 1858, CO 305:9, no. 1070, 245. V58049.html; Wanted, Daily Victoria Gazette, 5 August 1858, 2; Frederick John Hatch, The British Columbia Police, 1858-1871, (MA thesis, University of British Columbia, 1955), 99-100. http://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0106820
• 3. Seymour to Grenville, 12 December 1868, CO 60:33, no. 802, 629. B68130.html; Musgrave to Wodehouse, 22 December 1870, CO 60:41, no. 1207, 316. B70163.html; Wodehouse to Musgrave, 17 February 1871, NAC RG7:G8C/18, 63. B717015.html
• 4. A Veteran Dead, Daily Colonist (Victoria), 20 October 1891, 1. http://n2t.net/ark:/13960/t4rj6fm4w