CIVILIAN, s. A term which came into use about 1750–1770, as a designation of the covenanted European
servants of the E. I. Company, not in military employ. It is not used by Grose, c. 1760, who was himself
of such service at Bombay. [The earliest quotation in the N.E.D. is of 1766 from Malcolm’s L. of Clive,
54.] In Anglo-Indian parlance it is still appropriated to members of the covenanted Civil Service [see
COVENANTED SERVANTS]. The Civil Service is mentioned in Carraccioli’s L. of Clive, (c. 1785), iii.
164. From an early date in the Company’s history up to 1833, the members of the Civil Service were
classified during the first five years as Writers (q.v.), then to the 8th year as Factors (q.v.); in the 9th
and 11th as Junior Merchants; and thenceforward as Senior Merchants. These names were relics
of the original commercial character of the E. I. Company’s transactions, and had long ceased to have
any practical meaning at the time of their abolition in 1833, when the Charter Act (3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 85),
removed the last traces of the Company’s commercial existence.
1848.—(Lady O’Dowd’s) “quarrel with Lady Smith, wife of Minos Smith the puisne Judge, is still remembered
by some at Madras, when the Colonel’s lady snapped her fingers in the Judge’s lady’s face, and said
she’d never walk behind ever a beggarly civilian.”—Vanity Fair, ed. 1867, ii. 85.
1872.—“You bloated
civilians are never satisfied, retorted the other.”—A True Reformer, i. 4.
