Henry Cockburn (consul)


Henry Cockburn was a British diplomat.

Family

Cockburn was born in Calcutta in 1859. He was a son of Francis Jeffrey Cockburn, a Judge in India and with the Bengal Civil Service, and wife Elizabeth Anne Pitcairn. His paternal grandparents were Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn, and his wife Elizabeth Macdowall, while his maternal grandparents were Robert Pitcairn and his wife Dorothy/Dorothea Jessy Dumas.
Claud Cockburn, the journalist, was his son and the journalists Alexander Cockburn, Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn are his grandsons.

Biography

Cockburn served in China for 25 years from 1880, as British Consul-General to Peking and Vice-Consul in Chungking, China. In late 1901 Cockburn was appointed to assist Sir James Lyle Mackay, who had been appointed His Majesty´s Special Commissioner to conduct negotiations with representatives of China, The negotiations resulted in the Sino-British "Mackay Treaty," which anticipated the abolition of extraterritoriality in China.
In 1905, Cockburn was appointed Consul-General in Seoul, Korea, at the beginning of the Japanese occupation. In 1908 Cockburn sought to protect a Korean journalist, Yang Ki-taik, who had been detained but was able to escape and seek refuge in The Korea Daily News building, which Japanese police were unable to enter due to its British ownership and a treaty with Britain. Under pressure from the Foreign Office, Cockburn eventually handed over Yang Ki-taik, but resigned in protest.
He was invested as a Companion of the Order of the Bath.

Marriage and issue

He married at Totlands Bay, Hampshire, on 9 October 1899 Elizabeth Gordon Stevenson, daughter of Colonel James Francis John Stevenson and wife and wife Louisa Cameron Ross , by whom he had one daughter and one son:
He died in Tring in 1927.